Kindergarten Events

In case I haven't been clear, I love working in kindergarten! I love the challenge of supporting children with all the different things that they need, I love the collaboration with the other teachers, I love the activities available for the children and me to enjoy, I love the relationships I build with parents and children, and I love the fulfillment of knowing that I am helping children to grow into happy, healthy, kind individuals.

Now, in addition to that, I can say that I love kindergarten events! I have not had a lot of experience with them in the past, as the private places I have worked haven't had many, but since starting at Puketapu Kindergarten, I've participated in several, and I really like them! I thought I would give you a summary of some of them.

Kindergarten Taranaki Inaugural Banquet:

Since it does not involved children, this banquet only half counts as a kindergarten event, but J and I had fun, so it's included. The theme was "winter on the mountain," and we were expected to dress up for it. Unfortunately, I was the only teacher from my team who could go, so we didn't get to have fun planning our costumes together like other teams did. There were teams of snow angles, Māori atua (gods), snowboarders, etc.). J and I opted for wearing all blue and dousing ourselves in white, frosty glitter, which unfortunately did not show up in the picture. Trust me, we were impressively sparkly. 

The hat and bouquet came from a teacher I met there who was dressed as the winter sun, with yellow-orange flowers everywhere and dark sunglasses. I'm not sure how they ended up on us, but there they are. 

We didn't know anyone there, but we got to meet a lot of different teams of teachers, which was great. Although we all work for Kindergarten Taranaki, teaching teams don't get many opportunities to see each other, so I enjoyed this event.

Frozen Movie Night:

This is my makeshift Anna costume, which I wore the day of our Frozen movie night. I adore the movie Frozen, and love singing all the songs, so when the committee asked what movie we should watch at movie night, I eagerly suggested Frozen.

Although Anna does wear a green dress for part of the movie, the important part of my costume is the white lock of hair (ribbon) running through my plait (as they call them here), indicating the place where Elsa's ice magic turned my hair white. I spent most of the day tying ribbons into all of the children's hair so that they could be Anna, too!

That night, we all wore our pajamas (I wore my glow in the dark rocket ship footie pajamas) and watched Frozen at kindergarten. I know the kids' faces look funny partially blurred out, but I wanted you to be able to see their wide open mouths - we are all belting out the songs in Frozen, which are amazing! We sing them all the time during the day, and it was particularly special to sing them all together along with the movie.

Dress-Up Disco:

Disco? At a kindergarten? In costumes? YES! And I must add that we are rocking out to techno remixes of songs like Bob the Builder and Elmo's World, as well as "classics" like What Does the Fox Say? and the chipmunks version of Chris Brown's Yeah. You know, in case the picture wasn't goofy enough already. 

So... yes, I dressed up as spider woman and danced around like a maniac with all the children at the disco. In fact, given that I was one of the few adults who went crazy dancing, I usually had a line of children waiting to dance with me.

Notice that I am dancing with no two boys who are also spider people. Spiderman is the superhero of the year in kindergarten-world, so I think there were about ten of us. Some of the boys were so excited to see me dressed as spider woman that they couldn't even talk!

This is me with the only other female spider person - one of my kids' 2-year-old sister. I wish that I could unblur her face so you could see how stunningly adorable she is, but hopefully you get the idea. She followed me around all evening, dancing like the party animal she is, grinning from ear to ear. It was great!

Snow Collecting/Celebrate Winter Day:

At kindergarten, we celebrate each season with special activities relating to that season. This year, for Celebrate Winter Day, we decided to drive up Mount Taranaki and fill up a trailer full of snow and bring it back down to kindergarten for the children to play in.

Here is me and my co-teachers, proud of our harvest. I had to laugh a little at myself - last winter (in Ottawa), all I wanted was for the snow to be taken away, and now this year I am driving up the mountain to haul it down to kindergarten. Yet another reminder that everything is relative.

The newspaper did a story about our snow harvest, and printed it along with this picture (and a picture of the kids playing in the snow). Everyone was very excited about it.

While we were up the mountain, one teacher found an old sign, and we used it to do some makeshift sledding, which was quite fun. I love that I work with people who decide to do some makeshift sledding while collecting snow for Celebrate Winter Day. Who wouldn't?

Quiz Night: This was another childless event, but it was really fun. Quiz Nights are a popular fundraising even in New Zealand - you have teams and answer rounds of trivia questions. I wished that Grandma Verschelden was on our team, because she would have known all the answers, but we still did okay. J was on the "teacher team" with all of us, and he knew a lot of the answers, and we did our best with the rest. A lot of parents came, as well as many people from the community, and it was a very good time.