happy children's day!

Not usually celebrated (at least to my knowledge) in America, but celebrated here is "International Childrens Day". On June 1st, all the preschools had special little shows, older kids got out of schools, and the dentistry profession gets further assurances it will be needed in the future, what with all the candy that is bought for kids on this day alone.

Our preschool had been preparing for weeks in advance for the big Children's Day shindig. I, of course, was asked to do some special little "program" which I was only vaguely sure of what they wanted me to do. I asked around to see what the other teachers were doing and picked something accordingly. Being the only english teacher representing the "English department" (haha) at the preschool, I felt some pressure to do something that was not lame. After my initial choice fell flat after a day of testing (I tried do an old youth group number - dum dum diddy, you know where you hit your lap and then your neighbor's lap...yeah, yeah...sometimes I can still see rob doing that in my sleep!) I ended up choosing a little action rhyme from a past issue of High Five (the 2-5year old version of Highlights - shameless plug to all you preschool parents out there...my kids adore these magazines!) It was about a certain big grey elephant who lived in the jungle.

Anyway, we practiced it a few days in my english class and the kids liked it and actually could do it with me. Nice.

I also got to watch the four and five year olds practicing their numbers in the afternoons after my class got out. The five year old girls were going to be dressed up as ballerinas, prancing about the stage waving ribbons that would eventually come together to form the olympic rings at the end of the number. Some of the naughty, ahem, I mean energetic boys would be doing a kung fu demonstration under the direction of teacher Peter. And then the girls I really like (and posted pics of on my blog) were going to be dancing the life cycle of a sunflower, complete with little sunflower costumes. Even I, with my lack of affection for bustling crowds, was looking terribly forward to it. Josh and I both agreed it would be fun to take the girls, too. In the end, josh also came and so that was really fab.

So before we get there, we were notified that on children's day, all the kids get a little present from the preschool - new clothes! (that look strangely like uniforms...) but anyway, Emma got her own little set of preschool clothes so she got to wear those to the big party.

So here are the pictures I took, though I have to confess my ignorance of acheiving good lighting in bad-lighting sitations and am open for any ideas for the fab photogs who read my blog

A "Where's Waldo?" game for you. Can you find Emma? :)

A last encouraging word from teacher Peter before the class of dancing chickens take the stage...I never saw these kids practicing before the program, but these barely 18-24 month olds were representing the olympic mascots. They all wore makeup. Even the boys. For once in our asia lives, all these video cameras were not pointing at us!Kung-fu boys enjoying the olympic mascot danceEnter dancing chickens, stage left:

kung fu boys:

Samantha eventually moved from her spot on the front row surrounded by unfamiliar places to the back of the crowd where she could stand on a stool and laugh at everything! She loved it!Emma actually went up on stage with me and did the Elephant Walk, but there are no pictures of that since I was the photographer. :) After all the festivities (which included josh being called up as a volunteer for teacher Peter's "program") we went to all the classrooms and passed out bookmarks that had special words on them about how children are a blessing from the Lord. We all had a great morning, and we finished the fun off by picking up lunch at kfc and having a picnic in park next door.

Here are a few more pictures of happy parents and children celebrating children's day together with us...

(of course, we all know that children are the center of asianese families, but this picture - with energetic little tao tao being filmed by both of his parents - cracked me up!)doesn't emma look like such a big girl in her school clothes?Mantha was all happy smiles around the other kids, and especially loves hugs from daddy...