Harvest Festival

Last Friday, all the kids in the school had a special day of celebration. Since we are a Christian school, we don't partake in the Halloween festivities though we don't speak out about it either because it's a personal choices for each family. Instead we have a Harvest Festival. Each grade from Pre-K to 8th grade gets to do something fun! The Pre-K kids stay at the school and have an in-school field trip. The kindergarten to 3rd graders went to a farm to do some pumpkin picking. The 4th to 8th graders went rollerblading/skating!

I don't actually rollerblade with the kids because of an incident years ago when I fell directly on my coccyx because a small kid cut me off on the rink. That student was later pulled off the rink for dangerous skating because he kept doing it to others as well. Too bad it wasn't earlier because I didn't fall at all until that moment! 

Instead, I loved that I had a chance to just sit on one of the many couches outside of the rink and just watch the kids have fun and slowly improve throughout the time we were there. We did, unfortunately, have a few injuries. Thankfully, many of them were not major ones; it was just normal injuries you'd expect at a roller rink that the kids just turn into a dramatic scene! One girl even got so emotional about one of the songs being played that she accidentally crashed into the wall. Haha, it's kind of funny thinking about how teenagers are these days, but I also got excited about anything 'Nsync stuff on the radio or on TV! This was way before YouTube too, so our only access to our favorite bands were the rare moments we heard them on the radio, waiting for them to be on TRL, and finally buying the CD when it was released. Haha, oh how times have changed. 

Having these easy days is so much fun because when we have our teaching days, I only really get to see the other teachers during lunch. We're in our separate classrooms doing our thing, so it's really quite relaxing to be able to talk and laugh. We had a ton of laughs because my colleague Jessica was having such issues trying to get a picture of the four teachers who were there! She tried and tried and tried, but doing "selfie" pictures just wasn't working for her! 

I took this picture of the four of us with Jess's camera before Jess kept attempting it herself.

I just noticed it now, but this picture makes it look as if we're at a bar and not at a school field trip! We really are at the rink though! Haha, of course everything else is dark, so you can't even make out anything else that's in the background.

The kids had a blast too because not only could they blade/skate, there were also arcade games for them to play. Many of them were scoring a ton of tickets from these games that they could trade in for prizes. I remember loving this stuff when I was a kid too. Despite the fact that it'd be cheaper to just buy the prize elsewhere for less money, it feels so rewarding spending money on tokens to win tickets to trade in for prizes. Haha, go figure.

Instead of taking the bus back, we continued with tradition and walked to McDonald's first before going back to school. It's so close by, but it's still an adventure to take the entire middle school there. We take turns by grade to go inside to let them buy a treat like an ice cream cone or a shake, and the kids just have a blast being silly. I really enjoy these moments because kids just need to be kids sometimes. I also like the idea of their going in to order something and pay for it. I know it can be a somewhat new thing in middle school as they learn how to be more independent.

After a walk back, we played the "line-up game" with the kids for a bit. Basically, we tell all the kids in middle school to line up according to a certain category like height or birthday month. It's kind of funny because some of the kids take it so seriously while others think it's ridiculous. What makes it entertaining for us is that we say that if they can't do it within a certain amount of time that they will get more homework, which of course would be unfair, but some of them believe it anyway! We were cracking up because my mentor teacher was timing them, but she didn't actually have a watch! It took many rounds until one of the students caught on when she looked over and commented, "Wait, you don't even have a watch!"

Once we were done with that, we let the kids play dodgeball or just sit around and chat. Even though it was freezing cold outside, it was a relaxing day in that we didn't have to teach or do work. Of course, field trips days are actually MORE exhausting than teaching days! I was so glad all of this was on a Friday because I was in desperate need of my Friday nap when I got home!