school days, school plays

Last week was mighty exciting at Erin's school. One weeknight was open house for the whole school, so after dinner we all came to her class together to have her give us a tour of the latest projects. Erin had a worksheet on a clipboard with different items to be sure to point out to us, and she took that job very seriously, and checked off each item in turn.


Open house lasted an hour and I couldn't imagine that we'd need to be there that long. We arrived about 10 minutes late and we actually were kept very busy for the entire remaining time. Erin has had a productive year! I'm always amazed by the creativity in so many of her assignments, meaning, the creativity on the part of the teachers to come up with this stuff, and Erin's creativity as well. There were many more poems she'd written that I saw for the first time that night, and some wonderful artwork and story writing too.


Meanwhile, Kate and Allison noticed a friend from their preschool, the younger sibling of one of Erin's classmates, so the three of them played together for most of the time.


Erin took time to pose with her teacher, and with two of her buddies, Elvis and Brandon.

Erin always talks about Elvis and his twin brother Conner and they've been friends and classmates for two years now. I hope they are in the same village next year so they can continue to hang out together often.

Two nights later was Erin's village's spring play performance. She played a butterfly in "Rumpus in the Rainforest", a story about some frogs who lived on the rainforest floor and wanted to reach the forest canopy in order to see open sky and bask in the sunlight for the first time.


They encounter and ask for assistance from a number of other animals along their quest. The butterflies (and bats) are not some of the animals who talk with the frogs about their dilemma, but they do lead the theme song about midway through the play, and again at the end.



Parents were invited to come to school during the day and watch the dress rehearsal if we wanted, which was especially recommended if we planned on videotaping the show. Otherwise, during the evening performance, there are too many parents with too many video cameras jockeying for position in the back of the auditorium. So I took Kate and Allison and we watched the rehearsal, video camera in hand, with an audience comprised of students from several of the other classrooms.

I don't know what's up with this video. On my software it looks normal, as soon as I edit it to just the content with Erin's song, it becomes the land of short, fat people. I don't get it, an I can't seem to fix it.


Erin was very proud of her play, and I thought it was really clever, and funny.