Kindergarten Christmas

Wondering why I haven't posted in a week and a half? Well, wonder no more. Check out the totally adorable Christmas tree ornaments in this picture!

Due to a misunderstanding about when family Christmas gifts were handed out, I spent every waking moment between last Thursday and today (Thursday) getting 48 of these gorgeous little ornaments done, so that 48 adorable children could swing off of 48 Christmas trees, starting today. Well, I am ferociously proud of how wonderful they are, but they took a staggering amount of time to do!

Note: I'm not sure why, but I took this picture before this set was finished - they all ended up like the one on the far left with the little red bar that makes it look more like a trapeze (except the ones holding on to one loop, because that would have been silly).

Anyway, no time for blogging while these were in progress, but they're all done now, and I'm feeling free and happy!

Also, I made one of me as an example for the kids, which is currently swinging on the kindergarten Christmas tree.

Speaking of kindergarten Christmas trees, have you seen ours? It is over 15 feet tall and very fluffy and wonderful, and the whole place smells of pine. As one of the kids said when he walked in this morning, "Emma, wow! Look at that biggest Christmas tree I ever seen! It is HUGE!"

In a shocking lack of blogging skill, I forgot to take a picture of it after the children and I spent all day decorating it. I will get one tomorrow and post it soon.

Also, while we're on the subject of Christmas, here are some pictures of our truck/float in the Bell Block Christmas parade! We went with an Enviroschools theme, so we made tripods with bean and pea vines growing up them, and we had hay bales, a worm farm, and several real plants on it as well. It was a lot of fun to make everything with the children. We teachers added pictures of the kids having fun at kindergarten, and the whole thing looked great.

Getting ready to go.

I was Santa, as was one of my kindergarteners' little brother. Big Santa, Little Santa!

I would like to share that, although I have never actually been Santa before, I will hazard a guess that it would be more fun to wear velvet (even fake stuff) in a place where Christmas is in winter. Just a thought.

On this particular Christmas, Santa and Snow Queen Elsa made friends, which we think is good, because she can make sure that there is plenty of snow for Santa's reindeer to land on, although she'll have her work cut out for her during the warm NZ summer.

The children got to dress up as whatever they wanted, which meant that we had a lot of Spidermen. Which worked out well, given that they were still Christmasy red.

J came and watched the parade, and after spending the whole time looking for the children's families along the road to make sure that they were in time to see their child and give a special wave, I was rather unreasonably excited to see the person who wanted to give me a special wave!

Hard to tell in the picture (J took pictures with his phone, which doesn't have a very nice camera), but the bit that says Puketapu Kindergarten at the back is a big, long worm. You know, for helping the gardens grow.

The Christmas parade, like the ornaments, was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We also had our End of Year party during kindergarten today, and now that that's all over, and we have one more week of kindergarten before the Christmas/summer holiday, I'm glad that we're on the downhill slope. Now, off to bed for a well-deserved good night's sleep.