Turning a Woops into an A-Ha!

This baby brain is causing some uncommon crinkles in my typical school day. ;) Normally I'm super organized & prepared, but in the last few months I forget things often & feel a little confused at times. Today was no exception. I arrived at my afternoon class with only half of what I needed for the planned craft. We're learning about animals & were going to paint stripes on zebras by rolling marbles in paint in trays. I had the zebras, I had the paint, I had no marbles, I had no trays. Last minute rethink! I was really beating myself up for foolishly forgetting yet another simple thing & decided to just pull out thin paint brushes & have the kids paint the stripes by hand. I sat down with the first 5 kids, demonstrated what we were doing & watched them happily paint their zebras with perfect stripes. The next batch of kids came & my mistake turned into a very happy accident. I discovered that three of my students could not successfully motor plan how to make controlled lines. No matter how many times I demonstrated or hand-over-hand helped them, they could not do it. If I had not forgotten those materials I would still be assuming this was a basic skill all my kids had, now I know what I need to work on & am making plans for focusing on this skill for those 3 kids. Who knew such a silly mistake could result in something so important?