Guides on Parade

Our little town holds a Christmas parade every year. The main street (co-incidentally name Main Street) is closed off and the residents gather along the street and watch the local entrants. It really is very cute, with the local groups like rugby, creches, retirement village, churches etc all participating and it is extremely festive and friendly.

They also have a few carnival rides set up, sausage sizzle and a band or two for when the parade finishes. Lollies and ice blocks are handed out to the kids and Santa comes to visit on the back of our towns antique fire engine. 

This year one of the guiding parents organised a float for us to participate. The kids love going in the parade but we leaders are usually too exhausted by the end of the year to bother, so if a parent isn't interested in organising it then we usually give it a miss. This year I actually had a parent respond to my email asking if anyone was interested in doing it, so that was pretty pleasing.

Here are our girls going so slowly (so slow it was funny; people walked past us faster) down the road to join onto the end of the parade. Our theme was Guiding is Fun with a tent, fake camp fire, trees, etc set up on the truck. The girls either had fishing rods that they made or marshmallows on the ends of toasting sticks. The feedback that we had from the crowd was that they just loved the girls with their rods and marshmallows and singing.

 

 

"Dad please go away and stop taking our photos!"

 

 

 

The 20 or so girls (we could have lost one or two along the way) were all singing Guiding songs as we drove along the parade.

 

There was actually a fair bit of work that went into it but it was great PR for the unit and the girls really enjoyed themselves.

Practically Perfect Mary Poppins

Last night we girls headed off into Auckland to see the stage production of Mary Poppins.

 

 

The girls got all gussied up. It doesn't really take much for them to need a reason to dress up. It was interesting how many people commented to me how nice it was to see girls looking so lovely in dresses.

 

 

 

Here they are again, with their friend Country Girl, who came with us, outside the very beautiful Civic Theatre right in the middle of Auckland. For those who haven't seen the Civic, it is a lovely old theatre right on the corner of two main streets in the centre of town. In order to get a photo I would have had to go right across the road, which I didn't have time to do before the show started.

 

 

 

Eating cotton candy during the intermission.

 

Even though the stage production was just brilliant, the first half was rather long and they were just starting to get a bit fidgety before the break. I had a couple of whispered "how long before we get a break?" across the seats.

 

The show was so well done and I even saw the girls clapping and singing along in parts. Of course I threw myself into it wholeheartedly ... much to their embarrassment and my mirth.

 

 

 

 

On the way back to the car the girls enjoyed the lights and decorations set up throughout town for Christmas.

Rudolph Christmas Craft

I had the girls make these at our Christmas GirlGuide breakup.

All you do is press your thumb into some brown paint and then onto a bauble. Once the thumbprint dries, draw with a sharpie, or paint, a red nose onto the middle of the print and two black dots for eyes and a couple of antlers. You can fit 3 or 4 around the bauble.


These are so simple yet despite this we still had quite a few mistakes made by the girls in our group. One girl covered her ball in fingerprints, another two pressed so hard they broke their balls and another couple of girls kept slipping their thumbs across the balls so that I had to keep wiping them and getting them to do them again. I might point out that the older girls were making more mistakes than the littlies too ... lol

The Last Art Lesson with Anna

Sadly, today was the girls final art lesson with Anna.

They finished the water painting and yarn Christmas trees that they started last week.

A very giggly Fashionista with her holly water painting.

 

A close up of The Fashionista's water painting and her yarn tree.

 

Agent Smelly with her water painting. I am hoping to have these framed so the girls may keep them and bring them out at Christmas each year.

 

Agent Smelly's water painting and yarn tree. I love her yarn tree; she did so well with it.


Both girls really enjoyed their time with Anna and I hope for them to be able to do some of her classes again next year.

Summer Day Reading

Well we've just about wrapped up school for 2012. I keep thinking I should give the girls a few extra school book activities but frankly they have been keeping themselves amused doing great things.

The other day they did interviews on everyone in the house. They wrote a pile of questions and the Papa and I gave them answers that we knew would challenge them a bit. IE name a country, food, fruit, etc. They had their dictionaries in hand and if they couldn't spell them they looked them up. They had a load of questions and they did so well that the Papa and I commented on it afterwards.

Then yesterday The Fashionista made a pile of "clues" and set up a nature challenge for hers little sister which they went off and did in the morning in the lovely sun.

The Fashionista has baked a carrot cake unaided, including the cream cheese icing. I confess to being a bit surprised by that.

Agent Smelly, who remember is only eight, has written a million notes for everyone (she loves to leave us love notes) and even wrote the words to a song which both girls sang for me. It was so darn cute.

"Hayee (sic) love-bug, I wanna give you a hug.
Cause you're worth a million wishes to me.
Hayee love-bug, I wanna give you a hug.
Cause my heart is a lock and you've got the key".

She also made herself a watering can out of a milk bottle, apparently to water the plants (helloooo ... what plants, we still don't have a proper garden!) but then I noticed her watering her sister instead.

 

 

Today I did ask them to try and catch up on some reading and here they are lazing on the deck doing it hard. Another reason I love homeschooling.