School Carnival

This Saturday was Ella's school carnival. The kids and teachers have been working for weeks to get ready for it, and it exceeded every expectation. In this book I'm reading right now, a 12-year-old character who is in a hurry to grow up poses the question, "what is childhood for?" On Saturday, it seemed to me, we saw the answer. The carnival was a moment of enormous joy for the children, but also a culmination of things they had been learning and working on for many months.

The carnival was held in the interior courtyard of the elementary school and started with the show. The theme was Africa, and each class had prepared something for the show. Ella's class along with a class of younger kids put on a play of the spider and the guinea fowl. Most of the kids either did dancing or the rhythm. Five kids had individual parts and quite improbably (for a child who is both shy by nature and is just learning the language) Ella was one of them. She was the jogging antelope. The story (a strange choice for a kindergarten play actually) was an African folk tale where all of the animals make fun of the spider. The witch decrees that anyone who teases another will die. So, the antelope teases the spider and dies. The giraffe teases the spider and dies. Then the guinea fowl comes along and the spider teases the guinea fowl and the spider dies. It was amazing to see Ella looking so confident, poised, and absolutely thrilled to have this part in the play. As her teacher has observed, she has really come out of her shell at school and it was wonderful to see her with her friends both before and after the play looking completely at ease - like she owned the place. The rest of the show was also fantastic. All of the kids knew all of the words. They had made their own costumes and the scenery. The dancing and the singing were lots of fun and clearly reflected the amount of work the kids had put into it.

After the show, there were carnival games and a buffet. Ella and her friends played bowling, pin the tail on the cow, fishing for gifts, knock over the cans, bike and scooter riding, face painting, etc., and snacked on quiche, cookies, and crepes.

As if that wasn't enough, that afternoon, Ella went to Alice's birthday party. What a good day to be a kid!