My kids...

We had our first birthday celebration in class on Tuesday...I've had a few other birthdays, but nothing in class yet. Kristopher's parents brought pizza - YUM! - and cake...now I'm not usually a big cake person but this was like strawberry shortcake and SO good! We had a good time visiting and eating and the kids got a HUGE kick out of their party hats...

On Wednesday we had our Thanksgiving Feast. Now I have to say I wasn't sure what to expect...especially since it's an American holiday and at first all I had for sign ups were LOTS of dessert and the turkey the school was providing...OOPS! Anyway, it all worked out, plenty to eat - 3 kinds of veggies, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, bread to feed and army, drinks, and desserts...I even managed to get enough paper goods! I had parents send in a count if they would be able to make it and by my calculations we were expecting they 18 kids and I and 17 parents...in my room...well the kids and I worked hard to figure out how to seat everyone and dragged in all the extra chairs and tables from the library, set the table with their cute place mats and I taught them how to do the napkin with the fork and knife so it was actually pretty nice (at least in the 2nd grade way) I organized the food tables and we were ready to begin. I had all the kids write a sentence about what they were thankful for and the parents seemed to enjoy that (one child was thankful for pizza and his mom...that got a good laugh!). Then it was time to eat...everyone was SO patient and I was shocked and how well the whole thing went - the parents helped A LOT to make sure everyone was served and even though I went last to make sure everyone got food after I sat down the parents wouldn't let me do a thing after that! They did most of the clean - up, helped put the chairs back, split up the leftovers and it was just a really nice experience. It might have helped that for the last hour and a half I ended up with only 7 kids still there ;) Seriously though - it might have been one of the easiest class parties I've experienced...gotta get on the ball to get Christmas organized now!

The goofy class picture that I had to let the take in order to get a "normal" one!
The "normal" one :)
We were pretty packed in! It got a little warm so I had to open the windows...thankfully the weather is cooler!