Christmas at Garden House Dec. 2011

Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love all of the fun events, parties, and celebrations held at Christmas time. My school held several Christmas events. Some took lots of preparation but each was fun and memorable. The first Christmas event that was held was Garden House's annual Advent Spiral. I had never heard of this before. At our Advent Spiral we put pine type leaves in a spiral shape. Then we arranged candles around the leaves. Then the parents gathered at sat on chairs. Once everyone was ready the "angel" (which was me.. mainly because I was one of the only ones with blonde hair and apparently I am angel-like haha) walked in with a candle lit. The angel then walked through the spiral and lit the middle candle. Then we started to sing Christmas carols. As we sang the kids came up with their parents and were given an apple with a candle in the middle. They then walked through one end of the spiral, lit their candle on the large candle, placed their candle somewhere in the spiral, and walked out the opposite side. It was a fun night. I love Christmas carols and this was a fun way to celebrate.

The next Christmas event we had was our Christmas Fun Day. This is an event where the families come and experience a bunch of fun activities run by the school. There were games, face painting, crafts, cookie decorating, two puppet show stories, a bake sale, a BBQ, and more. I helped with the puppet show stories. I was the story teller during the Gingerbread Man and I moved the puppets for the Elves and the Shoemaker. It was a LOT of work to pull of this event and though it was fun, we were also relieved when it was over. You can see pictures at Garden House's Facebook page. www.facebook.com/gardenhouse.preschool

Next came the performance our class put on for their parents. We decided to put on a Waldorf type Nativity program. Each of the kids was assigned a part. Then we all learned the songs. We worked hard for weeks and the kids did a great job! I think the parents were quite impressed. The best part about the whole thing was me bribing the kids. Right before the performance I told the kids that I would give them candy if they did their best. After the performance and after the parents clapped, one little girl named Mia called out, "Can we have the candy now?" All the parents started to laugh. I was caught! Hahaha So the parents found out that I bribed them with candy and I was a little embarrassed. But it was so worth it cause they did a great job!

After that we had our Christmas party during school hours, for the kids. On the last day before Christmas break we had a combined snack. The kids brought tons of goodies and we gathered in the kitchen of the school. All the kids wore Christmas crowns that they made. We sang some songs and then we ate... So much food... so yummy! We also did some Christmas gift giving.

I think it was later that day we had a staff Christmas party. We all came back to the school that night and celebrated with lots of food and a gift exchange. I was lucky enough to get this scarf that I am wearing in the following picture. What made the party extra cool was that my cousin Tam was in HK and she came with me! We had so much fun.