At least there was a connection.

In class I've started working towards building students' vocabulary.  For example, we read in a book that a child was born early and there wasn't a crib to put them in.  So the parents put the baby in a "chiforobe" until a crib could be acquired.  Of course, the first question from my students was, "What's a chiforobe?"  So we had a discussion and I described what a chiforobe looked like...it had drawers, clothes like socks, PJ's, etc could be stored in it,..." and asked if they had anything in their room that looked like that.  I got a response that a student had a "bureau" in their room, and I pretended I didn't know what that was.  The student explained what she has in it, which sounded a lot like what I'd described.  Someone else's hand shot up and said that they had a "chest of drawers" in their room.  I pretended to recognize that one, but another student said their grandmother called it just "drawers".  So next to a picture of a chest of drawers, I wrote all of their words. 

Then we segued into words that specifically name or describe things.  We used an example from one of our read alouds that described an item as being "canary".  The kids figured this was a type of yellow, and then we went about naming other shades of yellow.  One of my students said that my sweater was a mustard color (which it was), and another suggested "lemon".  The lesson went on smoothly enough and we transitioned into math.

At the end of the day, one of my students gave me a hug and proudly announced that they were, "Hugging mustard!"  At least there was a connection!