friday morning

. . . and I've been very busy getting the downstairs of the house tidy and sorted for tonight's do. It's jolly good to have to do it so near to Christmas, as it means there's not so much to do after the end of the term before the family descends!
I'm leaving the sweeping until after school though - it seems jolly inconsiderate to make such a noise at this time of the morning and my neighbours are good people who I would hate to annoy. But a lot of other stuff has been done. I think, as with so many things, the anticipation is worse than the reality!

Today, all the children are arriving in their show costumes. It's dress rehearsal day, starting as soon as we possibly can, with the juniors watching. The children come in their costumes, with their uniform in a carrier bag to change into afterwards. Mine are snowflakes and I gather glitter and tinsel has been flying in all directions at home while those wonderful grown-ups exercise their considerable creativity in devising those costumes.
After that there's another important Christmas event - the school Christmas dinner. Just about the whole school takes part, very few children are sandwiches on that day, and it takes from 11:30 to 1:15 to get through the whole school. Year 1 start at 11:30, so maths will be severely curtailed today.
After all that excitement, what can we do in the afternoon but another Christmas Craft - stand up angels with doyley wings this time. Nowhere near as free flowing as yesterday's activity, but I doubt they will complain, they'll be so tired by then.

And at some point I need to persuade the head to judge the Christmas Tree decorations. It was funny listening them talk about how they made them. it was 'Mummy this and Mummy that' with the occasional 'Daddy' input too. One little lad had both of his older sisters and his older brother involved, as well as mum and dad. Of course, one can tell which decorations truly are child centred and which have been adult driven with the occasional shake of glitter from the child, but they do look lovely on our little class tree and the children keep admiring it all hugely!

The evening will all be taken up with Chinese and Chat, of course. Lovely. I doubt people will stay for terribly long into the night - last night was the whole staff Christmas do. I didn't go, but just about everyone else did so they will be pretty tired today! I'm sure they had a wonderful time.