Ryan's Christmas Party

2nd post of the day- The 2nd Grade rotated among classrooms making crafts-a reindeer ornament, a parol-Philippine Christmas star, and a stocking, then went to the cafeteria for a crazy game & seeing Santa, then they came back upstairs to their rooms for lunch!  It was great fun!  I even heard one of the kids say "this is the best Christmas party EVER!"

 They have been studying countries in Social Studies and everyone made a poster.  Then they all had passports and had to write down things they learned from each others posters-as I have said many times before Ryan has a terrific teacher this year!  Below is Ryan's poster on Vietnam

 Some other country posters

 Their cool reindeer ornaments!

 Ryan's parol

 Crazy games!

 of course some involve passing marshmallows on spoons

 jumping and running around

 and wearing candy canes on your ears!

 Ryan is on the far left in the picture with his class and Santa

Ashley's Christmas Program

Ashley and her class sang "KumuKutiKutitap"  a Filipino Christmas song about bright sparkling stars-the kids did some singing and a lot of dancing around with stars on their backs-still it was very cute!

 I believe this class sang "Santa Claus is coming to Town"

 One of the younger classes-not everyone was very happy to be on stage!

 This class did a play, including below, Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus

 Ashley's class dancing!

 Jumping outside her school with Daddy afterwards-so fun getting to watch our girl perform!

More crazy drawings

 So Ashley says that we are all holding on to parachutes and going over a rainbow.  It is our family of five-everyone drawn in their favorite color, she is just a little obsessed about favorite colors lately!  and the extra person is Abby Jane!

That is Mr. Sun (there is a song about Mr. Sun that she sings at school) above the rainbow and Ashley is pink, I am purple, Greg is green, Ryan is blue, and Scott is red.  Abby Jane is some shade of pink or purple.

I asked her how we got so high up in the sky, thinking maybe she would say that we jumped out of an airplane (something I have always wanted to do & Greg says that I am crazy) but no she said that we all jumped really high!

The artist at work-

She wrote this poem down for me-love to interpret spelling at this age-Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you

 I love you God and Mommy and Daddy, Blythe, Abby Jane and Joy.  I love you Grammy and some repeats and love, Ashley.  I believe that this was the one that asked me if we could mail to Heaven!  So cute

 This has got to be one of my favorites-below is a manger scene.  In the middle is Baby Jesus in the manger.  Joseph and Mary are on the far left and right and the tall things with triangles on them are tall tables with slices of pizza for Joseph and Mary to eat-Greg said "well the Romans were ruling the world at that time" 

 This is a flower-what made me laugh most about this was the word in purple is supposed to be differences and Ashley asked me what were the differences between some parts of the picture

Ryan's Program

The story was really neat.  One of the main characters was Psalty-a blue living songbook.  She was supposed to take a group of children to sing at Brent and her pages were dusty, the children washed them, and they shrunk so the songs on her pages would not be sung correctly.  She spoke to "the principal" on the phone-really a very young child who did an amazing job playing the principal.  Psalty was played by a 2nd grader and she did a terrific job also.

The message was about God's power and how He takes care of ALL things!  Below are some pictures.

Oh-before I forget, there was a celebrity you came to Ryan's program-it was Manny Pacquiao, the boxer.  He is HUGELY popular here.  He was in a fight not long after we moved here and when we came to Manila I had never heard of him but you can't help but know who he is because he is on billboards and signs all over town!  His children go to school at Brent and were in the program also.  When he entered the theater, everyone began to applaud which was nice and then people started holding up their cameras in an effort to "discreetly" take his picture!  That made me laugh!  You can read more about him here-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Pacquiao

The program was wonderful and I think Ryan's favorite part was the flashlights at the end-

 Some of the younger students-above and below

 Here is Psalty-her head pokes out of the spine of her songbook costume

 Ryan on the back row-with his good buddy Daniel

 The little girl in the red dress and headband is a friend who went to Ashley's school last year but is in Kindergarten now

 Mary and Joseph

 The flashlight surprise at the end

They did an amazing job with their program!