School Plays and Activities

The kids are officially on winter break until 4 January. Leading up to the end of term, they did lots of fun activities at school.

One of the big things the school did was the Christmas play. There was a separate one for the nursery class and the infant classes (Reception and Year 1 and 2).

Lily was one of three shiny stars in the nursery play. I think their play was just a bunch of cute songs with some dancing, but I'm not sure because Lily got strep throat the day before the performance and missed it. She was sad, and I was sad because this would've been her first play. She may have loved it, or she may have gotten self conscious and refused to participate. Guess we'll find out next year.

The infant play was all about "the magic of Christmas." The premise was that two kids were ill at Christmas, and the Christmas fairy granted their wishes to do all of the fun stuff kids love during the holiday. The play was written by one of the teachers, and the music teacher wrote an original song for it. The Reception class did the nativity bit.

This school is not religiously affiliated, but it is standard in England for schools to have a small amount of religious education. The nativity play is a big tradition here. Now, we're not religious, but we will encourage the kids to learn a lot about many religions. And, at least at this school, they encourage diversity and do like to expose the kids to different religions and cultures.

So Miles landed the part of a wise man. He even had a line - "I bring frankincense!" (He said it loudly and enthusiastically, it was cute.) He told us leading up to the play that he couldn't wave at us because he had to just smile and walk kingly, and he did just that. I love watching performances at this age.

Delivering his line

The Saturday after the plays was the school's Christmas Fair. I didn't get any pictures of this because I was helping out. There were stalls with vendors selling stationery, teddy bear clothes, and makeup, to name a few. There were raffles, crafts, and games, and Santa was there for photos. We didn't get pictures with Santa here, because we had to rush off to a Christmas party put on by Matt's workplace. It was fun though. We won a 1000 piece puzzle through the raffle, and the kids got sugar cookies and sausages to eat.

Then basically the last week of school before end of term was just fun and games. The classes had Christmas parties, visits from Father Christmas, and lots of craft opportunities. Miles' class even had a elf on the shelf. Luckily he didn't ask why we don't have one - they creep me out!

And now, nearly a whole month of three kids at home 24/7. Wish me luck...