(delightful music) - Good morning, boys and girls and welcome back to Room Nine, the region's largest classroom.

It is Dr. Sanders and I'm here to teach you a little ELA and math to all of my pre-K students.

But what do I always say?

It doesn't matter if you're two or 102, you will have some fun or we will have some fun.

F-U-N, fun.

We will have some fun while learning.

I work at Adams Elementary in the St. Louis Public Schools and let's get our day started.

It is Friday, let's look at our objectives for the week.

In ELA, you will practice pre-reading skills and recognizing the main characters in a story.

And in math, we will understand numbers through subitizing.

So let's get started with a mindful moment.

Our mindful moment today is just to... We've done this before, but you see me rubbing my hands and right now, just think.

Sometimes you just take some time out just to think and you can rub your hands together or you can just relax and fold 'em, close your eyes and just think.

You can do this for 30 seconds, you can do for a minute, 10 seconds, whatever you need to just bring yourself back to center, just think.

All right, everybody try it.

Maybe close your eyes, maybe rub your hands together.

All right, it's time to wake up (laughs).

Oh!

Time to get up, don't fall asleep.

All right, let's take a look at some of our names for the week.

Remember this is Black History Month, we're gonna be celebrating by talking our names of famous black people.

Here we go what... Whose name is this?

Long for Ms. Felicia Long.

She works for St. Louis Public Schools.

Hi, Ms. Felicia.

Mae, Mae Jemison, the first black astronaut, women astronaut, in space.

Ida, Ida B.

Wells, an American journalist and activist.

Marcus for Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican political activist.

It was all about black nationalism.

Jesse, Jesse Owens.

He was the first American to win four track and field medals in the Olympics.

Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician and she worked to get America into space.

Toni Morrison, an African-American author and a Pulitzer prize winner.

Claudette Colvin, she was 15 years old and one of the... Before Rosa Parks, she refused to get out of her seat and got arrested for it, Claudette Colvin.

Malcolm, Malcolm X, African-American Muslim minister and a prominent figure for civil rights.

And Frederick Douglas, an American abolitionist and a reformer and a social reformer, I'm sorry.

Those are our names of famous black people.

Let's take a look at our words for the week.

Your, let's spell your.

Your, Y-O-U-R, your.

Your ears are really small or big or small.

Just, let's spell just.

Just, J-U-S-T, just.

Just in case you don't remember, you are the smartest person I know.

Who.

Who is watching "Teaching In Room 9"?

I am.

Let's spell who.

Who, W-H-O, who.

Three.

Let's spell three.

Three, T-H-R-E-E, three.

There are three-year-olds who are watching.

I have three fingers up.

Can you show me three fingers?

Cool, cool, cool.

All right.

You've been sitting a long time.

Oh!

My fault, I forgot the letters.

What letter is this?

E, lowercase E. K. Yes, N. D. Man, you all are good at that.

You are getting so good at knowing your lowercase letters and your uppercase letters, but you been sitting a long time.

Please stand up, jump up and down 10 times.

Go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

Raise the roof for seven, go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Run in place for six, go, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Eight jumping jacks, go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

All right, sit down on four, one, two, three, four.

Up, down, up, down, sit right down on the ground, on the floor, on your pillow or in your seat or on the couch, but please don't jump on the couch.

Rona, we are gonna read a story today, it is called "Rona".

We are going to read a story today, it is called, "Rona, Rona, Go Away".

"Rona, Rona Go Away".

Away and they rhyme.

Anyway, this is the what?

Front cover.

This is the back cover.

This is the spine and this is a book written by Ms. Adrian Draper, which is a local St. Louis artist, as you can tell if you look in the picture.

You can see what?

What's that thing in the background?

The arch, that's the St. Louis, the Gateway Arch and the Corona virus is still around.

COVID-19, whatever you wanna call it.

COVID-19 with the Coronavirus.

We're still fighting it.

We still got to stay safe.

That's why you are wearing your mask.

If you have a cough mask, you can wear two masks, keep yourself safe, as safe as possible and healthy, right?

And we wear masks for our friends, okay?

We wear masks for everyone around us.

And you can wear, if you have a cough mask, you can double it up.

You can wear any mask you want, just try to keep everyone safe.

And especially our teachers and our students at school.

But "Rona, Rona Go Away".

And we're still talking about this even though it started long time ago.

This is the front cover.

This is the back cover.

This is the spine.

Let's look at the front cover.

Oh!

Look at the cover.

They go together, you see that?

Cool.

And I have permission from the author to read her story.

"Rona, Rona Go Away".

It was the week before spring break and we were all excited.

My parents always chose different cities to visit so that no magnet on our refrigerator would ever be the same.

That Wednesday, backpacks fill as it was the last day of school.

Teachers explained that our break was beginning as early as tomorrow and we were all thrilled about a longer vacation.

That evening, dad said we were staycationing since some cities closed fun places.

Mom always made us wash our hands, but that time seemed different.

There was a virus that was making a lot of people sick so families were ordered to stay home to avoid spreading it.

Dad and I wore a mask as we rode to get things for the house.

It seemed like every car we pass, people did the same.

We drove further than normal because stores were running out of things.

Every car had toilet tissue and paper towels.

By the time we got to the aisle, there was barely any left.

When we went to the toilet aisles, my job was to find games we could all play together.

I chose puzzles, board games, cards, balls and sidewalk chalk.

It was a good thing it was just dad and I because our truck was loaded.

We stopped by my grandparents before going home.

Dad and I placed items on their porch, got back in the car then called them to let them know that they were there.

We waved and talked from the car then left.

More and more stores began to close so dinner at home became normal.

Before, we were always headed to practice after school and rarely had time for dinner.

One day I looked up at the sky, there were so many thick clouds.

The blue sky barely peeked through.

Dad says since more people work from home, less pollution.

We played every game a million times, watched every movie a trillion times and I miss family and friends.

Dad thought it would be a great idea to go bike riding throughout the neighborhood.

We rode past the park but the playground was taped off like a crime scene.

Suddenly, the bike ride didn't seem like fun.

Mom had to go back to work.

She's a postal worker so she's considered essential.

Dad no longer left for work.

Instead, he kept his bedroom door closed when he was in his meetings.

He usually scheduled them when we were in our virtual classrooms.

It had been weeks since we were in school and I was so anxious.

The first time we had our virtual class, we were all excited to see each other.

Mrs. Robinson had to mute us so that we could hear her speak.

She asked what were our three pluses and a wish.

When it was my turn, I said, I like what my parents cooked, enjoy spending time with my family, glad pollution was down.

But my wish was for Corona to go away.

My friends began to chant, "Rona, Rona, go away!

Rona, Rona, go away!"

This was the beginning of our new normal.

Boys and girls, do you wish that the Coronavirus will go away?

COVID-19 will go away?

Yes, I do too.

All the variants, but we still gotta do our part to stay healthy, make sure we're washing our hands, make sure you don't dig in your nose.

I know a lot of you little kids like to dig in your nose.

Stay out of your nose.

But if you do dig in your nose, make sure you wash your hands afterwards or sanitize if you don't have a sink available.

We still got to take care of each other and make sure we try to stay as healthy as possible.

And thank our author for writing the book and the local author from St. Louis for allowing me to read it on air.

All right, we are going to do some counting.

We are just going to count from zero.

We are going to count from zero to 10 using sign language.

So that means we're not gon' talk, we're just gonna show our hands, okay?

Here we go.

All right, now let's count backwards from 10.

10, nine, eight, seven, six, popcorn, five, four, three, two, one, popcorn!

Popcorn!

(hums).

All right, now, before we get started, today is our recipe Friday, right?

Today is our recipe Friday.

And on recipe Friday, some people send their fave... Hopefully you send your favorite recipe so we can try making it and sharing it with everyone.

Today, what we're going to do is make some pancakes.

We're gonna make some pancakes but we're gonna add our own little ingredients to the mixture, okay?

So you get to watch us make some pancakes and we'll add our own ingredients to the mixture.

What would you add to your mixture or your pancake?

Oh!

We might add chocolate chips.

Sprinkles?

Interesting.

Bananas?

That would be something good.

Apples?

Okay, boys and girls, but let's go and make our pancakes.

All right, we are in the kitchen.

We're going to make some pancakes.

What's your favorite pancake recipe?

I'm gonna cheat a little bit today 'cause I use the pancake mix box.

It already has some of the stuff mixed up and then we have some milk, some sugar, eggs, some baking powder, some vanilla and then we're gonna add some of our own ingredients that make the pancakes our own.

First, we need two cups of the pancake mix.

Two cups of the pancake mix and one cup of milk.

Let's see if I know how to measure one cup.

(milk trickling) One cup of milk.

Two tablespoons of baking powder.

Two teaspoons of baking powder, not tablespoons.

Make sure you read the ingredients right.

One teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Oh!

Gives a little vanilla flavor.

And then we need two eggs.

One, two eggs.

A cup of milk.

And three tablespoons of sugar.

One, two.

And a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Ooh!

This looks like it's gonna taste marvelous.

So what's the first thing that you always do before you start?

Wash your hands, we already did that.

So we mix this all together until it's well blended.

(glassware screeching) It doesn't have to be smooth.

(glassware screeching) Just well blended.

(glassware screeching) And these will be your basic pancakes but we're not basic people, are we?

No, we don't wanna be basic.

So how can you make the pancakes your own?

What could you do?

What would you wanna do?

First, let's get another bowl.

Let's get another bowl and take some of our pancake mix and put it in that bowl.

What do you like?

You like chocolate chips?

Ooh!

So let's just take a handful of chocolate chips and add them to that bowl, to your pancake mix.

So what kind of pancakes would these be?

Chocolate chip pancakes.

All right, we're gonna turn on our griddle.

(griddle ticking) It's already oiled.

Now that we have our griddle and our chocolate chip pancake mix, we're gonna put this on.

Again, I don't know how it's gonna turn out but we'll see.

On our griddle.

(griddle sizzling) You're supposed to wait until the griddle is heated up.

I thought it was ready.

But we'll see.

While we're waiting on those to cook, let's go over here and we're gonna make another type of pancake.

We put some more pancake mix inside of a bowl, out of the big bowl and let's see, let's add some almond butter.

Let's add some almond butter to the mix.

About a spoonful or so.

Mix it up.

(glassware screeching) You're gonna mix that up.

(glassware screeching) All right, we got that all mixed up.

Now, as we're watching our chocolate chip pancakes, we wanna add almond butter pancake on here.

Just to see how it turns out.

(laughs) We're putting them all over the place.

(griddle sizzling) We can turn one of these over (exclaims).

All right, we're gonna let those cook.

Now, with the remaining pancake mix, we added some maple extract and we're gonna add a little cinnamon.

So some cinnamon maple pancakes.

We're gonna mix this up.

(glassware screeching) Smells good.

Does it smell good, Adera?

- [Adera] Yes.

- [Dr. Sanders] I saw her shaking her head like (hums).

And then once we come over and take these off the griddle.

(griddle sizzling) Once we get our pancakes off the griddle, we'll cook those.

So we'll be back in a little bit.

All right, we have a couple of our pancakes, I think, that are ready.

We're gonna take 'em off.

Oh!

That looks nice and ready.

Then we got that one, the chocolate chip pancakes.

Ooh!

These are the almond butter pancakes and while we're waiting, we're going to put some of our maple cinnamon pancake batter.

And while we're waiting on that to cook, Adera wants to try the, what are these called?

Chocolate chip pancakes.

Here's Adera and the chocolate chip pancakes.

- Pretty good.

- She's going back for more so it must be pretty good.

(utensils screeching) Let's take a look at our regular pancakes cooking and our almond butter pancakes.

(griddle sizzling) With all the bubbles, I think that's the only time you turn it over.

Ooh!

Look at that.

That looks perfect.

So what would you add to your pancakes?

What would you add to your pancakes?

I would love to see some of your pictures and some of you eating some of your nice pancakes and share your recipes.

I would love to make some of your recipes, all right?

Now that we got our regular maple cinnamon pancake and then we have our almond butter pancake, let's give it a taste.

This is the one with almond butter in it.

I'm just gonna use my fingers.

Use a fork if you're at home.

(Dr. Sanders exclaiming) (Adera chuckling) It's a different taste.

But I can work with it, but I would need some syrup for that one.

And this is just a maple cinnamon one.

Again, some syrup but this one is tasty even without the syrup.

Very flavorful.

So if you try this at home, please let us know and make sure you share it with your favorite word.

I mean, favorite TV, #NinePBS.

But what's our favorite word?

Nine.

Let's spell nine.

Don't talk with food in your mouth.

Nine, N-I-N-E, nine.

Thank you for being in Room Nine, bye bye.

(delightful music) - [Narrator] "Teaching In Room 9" is made possible with support of Bank Of America, Dana Brown Charitable Trust, Emerson and viewers like you.

(delightful music)