Holiday parties and celebrations

I really should have posted sooner, because now that it's January 3, it seems silly to be talking about Halloween. But I don't want to overlook the fun that the kids have had in school since my last post.

Tyler's preschool class had a Halloween party, which was really cute. All the kids got to take their costumes to school and wear them for the party. There were a couple of different crafts they got to do at the party as well as play a game and have some snacks. There are only 7 kids in Tyler's class, so it's a fun little size to do things like this. He got to paint a pumpkin, and play Halloween bingo, but his favorite part was the goody bag :)






The rest of the school, from kindergarten on up, gets to participate in a Halloween parade in costume. Justin loved it. Some of the costumes were so creative! Despite warnings that no masks or costumes with violent themes were to be worn, there were plenty of those too. The Halloween party followed the parade. Justin had a really good time, and it was nice that the kids had these celebrations at school since Halloween was a rainy and cold affair that no one particularly enjoyed at all!









Only a few short weeks later, the Christmas celebrations were in full swing. The school has a large variety of things going on during the Christmas season, from fund raising to outreach to just plain celebrating. There were opportunities to buy treats ($1 each) to send to friends, the PTO sold gift cards (no need to go to Kroger!), food donations were collected for St. Vincent de Paul and local food pantries, and on and on. The higher grades participate in a Christmas program, but the kindergarten has their own. The theme was "Breakfast in Bethlehem". The kindergarten classes did a re-enactment of the First Christmas, which had to be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Following that was the class Christmas party. Tyler's preschool class had a Christmas party on their last day before the winter break. They made ornaments and played "Reindeer, Reindeer, Santa" - the Christmas variation of Duck, Duck, Goose. :)












The PTO also hosts "Santa's Workshop". They purchase all kinds of little items and adult volunteers set up a little "store" for preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students to shop for the special people in their lives. Every item costs $1.00 and the volunteers help the children "shop". We provided a list of people for them to buy gifts for, and both boys had a blast picking out presents for the special people in their lives. Justin was so excited about his purchases, he wanted us to open our gifts the day that he brought them home! I thought this was such a neat activity for the kids and they really enjoyed being able to buy things that THEY picked out.

What really hit home for me later, in the midst of all of our celebrations, was that we were watching the Christmas story as told by sweet, innocent kindergarteners at the precise moments that the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings were occurring in Connecticut. We are very blessed indeed and I cherished each moment with my kids that much more this season.