Going to School

Samantha and John were in the living room of their mousehole. Their parents wanted to talk to them. "We've been thinking," Mrs. Mouse said. "We think it's time for you to go to a real school." John stared at her in amazement. "But you always teach us!" he exclaimed. "Well, I've taught you the basics, and now it's time for you to get advanced learning." replied his mother. "Really?" he asked. "Wow! How can we get there? When are we going to start? Did you two go to school, too? This is neat!" Mr. Mouse smiled. "Your mother didn't go to school," he answered. "I did. The way you're going to get there is very dangerous. You're going to sneak into the boy's backpack and ride there with him. We'll have to tell you where to go in school. You'll be starting day after tomorrow. We got you this." He handed each of them a little notebook and a piece of pencil. John's notebook was blue and Samantha's was bright pink. The pencils were yellow. Samantha and John spent the next day learning where they would go for each class. Mr. Mouse even drew up a map for them. John put it inside his notebook. Finally, it was time to go. The human boy's backpack was lying on the floor. Unnoticed, the two little mice ran and hid inside one of the pockets. In this way, they traveled to school. When they got there, John and Samantha got out of the backpack and scurried across the room to the mousehole by the bookshelf. They went through it and found themselves in a network of tunnels. John consulted the map and said," Okay. We go through the tunnel on the left until we come to a door on our right. We go through that and that's our first class." He put away the map. "All right," he said. "Let's go!" They went through the left tunnel and scuttled along until they came to a door. Taking a deep breath, Samantha reached out and opened it. An adult mouse turned around and said," Hello! Welcome to my class room. I'm your teacher, Mrs. Longtail. What are your names?" "I'm Samantha and this is my brother, John," Samantha replied. Mrs. Longtail went over to a desk in the corner of the room and checked something off on a piece of paper. "Your desks are right here," she said, pointing to two desks in the first and second row. John was behind Samantha. Samantha put her notebook and pencil on top of her desk and looked around. There was a bookshelf that had homemade books on it. There was a small chalkboard and two pieces of chalk. Above the chalkboard was a sign that said," Language Arts!" It was a very cheerful looking room. Soon, other mice came in. Samantha saw her friend Lucy Brown and went over to talk to her. It so happened that Lucy's desk was right next to Samantha's. John spotted his friend Dave White. His desk was in back of John's. Suddenly a bell rang. It was very loud to the mice, for it was the human bell. A couple of mice came in after the bell and Mrs. Longtail frowned at them. "From now on," she told the class. "Every mouse who is late has to do a detention after school." Samantha looked at Lucy and whispered," What's a detention?" "A detention is where you stay after school for twenty minutes and help the teacher clean the classroom," Lucy whispered back. "It's awful because how are you supposed to get home after the detention?" Mrs. Longtail explained the rules of her classroom to her students and then immediately started teaching. They each had a small dictionary. There were ten words up on the board. They had to define each word and use it in a sentence. This was called vocabulary. Then the bell rang again. Their next class was math. Their teacher, Mr. Whitty, told them that they were going to start with decimals that year. He explained what a decimal was and how to do it and then the bell rang. And so it went with their next class, science. They found out that they were going to be studying the human and mouse body. Then it was lunch. Samantha sat with Lucy and Meg. John sat with Roger and Dave. Lucnh was delicious. There was a lot of things to choose from. You could get peanuts, pieces of cheese, bits of carrot, peas, corn, and bread crumbs. For dessert there was skittles, brownie crumbs, popcorn, and pieces of doughnut. It was great! After lunch they had social studies and mouse skills. Mouse skills had to do with how to get food from humans without being seen, jumps you could do, tail tricks, and how to avoid owls. It was very interesting. After mouse skills, it was time to go home. John and Samantha found Fred's classroom and crept back into his backpack. "How was school?" Mr. Mouse asked when they got home. "It was great!" Samantha cried. They told him all that had happened. "I can't wait until tommorow!" John said, yawning. And so John and Samantha went to school.