If you go down to the woods today

So the junior & senior kindergartners (i.e. 4-5s) did a “unit” on bears this spring. They wrote & illustrated a book, had a picnic, etc. The culmination was the school concert. For just those kids, well over 100 relatives packed into the gym on Thursday night. The children were so excited; Seb had been counting the sleeps for a week. But the result was pretty darn lame (as you can see for yourselves below - or not). I mean why did we need the school system to teach our kids to stomp more?! (Seb is in his overalls, with an epi-pen around his waist and my sister's bear in his arms. He has never shown an iota of attachment to this creature before, but that's who he chose. His friend Xin is first/last in line in a Dewson school turquoise t-shirt & darling Um who graces us with a beautiful gown every school day is wearing, surprise, surprise, the beautiful gown).

Mr Evans is a lovely guy; so to cut him some slack, I posited that our kids were busy working on their sculptures with the community artist in residence. Seb was lucky to be in 1 of the 2 classes chosen for this event. He talked about it most days but there was a certain amount of secrecy. Tellingly, I haven't taken a photo of it (& M has taken the kids off to the party with the camera - which is why I have time to blog this morning!) but I will insert one here later. It is quite magnificent. Built out of "found materials", he sawed(!), hammered, glued, painted, re-glued, etc. I can't remember the whole explanation but it reflects on his being in Toronto. I'll have him explain it over the next few days.

A wonderful aspect was meeting the parents of kids who go to daycare. As a mostly not working mum, I power-push to school & back twice a weekday afternoon. But of the 22 kids, only 6 parents do that. The other 16 or so kids come in 2 groups brought by their daycare workers (bless them!). It was also a chance to meet the morning parents (i.e. who knew that Ivy in Seb's ballet class is in Mr Evans' morning group). Turns out that someone I knew at university is just blocks away with a daughter in the year ahead, and a colleague of Mike's has a boy in the opposite class to Seb. We also finally met the family that lives kitty-corner to the end of our street. They have oodles of bikes & trikes & wagons out front and I had figured that it was a single mum b/c I saw 2 kids with suitcases playing in the yard one Friday evening while two slightly tense adults conversed on the step. Ech of the kids is a year older than ours (i.e. 5 & almost 3) so they may befriend each other, but (perhaps even better for logistically-challenged me) they walk past our house every day on the way to daycare/school bus pick up!

Oh, and just to brag (some more...), our egg& dairy-free chocolate cake was a hit at the bake sale. Seb got the last piece and being Seb didn't even recognise that he had made it.