Preschool Productions (TM)

One of the most fun (or funniest) aspects of S's nursery school is the production schedule. We showed you some highights from the Fall show, and in February they presented their winter cycle. All of the children were assigned an animal to represent. My daughter was a mouse. I dutifully sewed cute mouse ears and cut some felt to make a pink mouse tummy on a gray outfit. The play was scheduled for Wednesday February 9. On Monday morning I was informed that my daughter wanted to be a fox. Oohhh-kaaay. For those who know my well, you are aware that the Martha Stewart gene is strongly expressed in my mother, but apparently skips a generation. I can do the basics, but whipping up a fox costume on the fly while working full-time was not in my repetoire. So. Home Monday night, get some more felt, make some orange/pink ears (sadly set really awesome mouse ears aside.) Find orange dress and brown pants (we don't have orange pants on hand, sorry, it's not her style, you know.) Realize I have a faux-fur collar from a suit that I never wear. Get to school and get told by nanny, teachers that they even have a little costume with vest and tail (seen in the video.) Mumble under breath about time wasted stressing on costume when it could have been really simple.

I wanted to upload the video of the foxes doing their dance, but S only goes part-time to school, so she's not 100% on the choreography. And since she was training as a mouse until the week before... well, it's not her best work, and I would hate for it to haunt her later. So what I am uploading is the video of the middle of the production, where the woman dressed as a giant snowman (a lovely, lovely teacher, BTW) brings out the "snowballs" for the kids to throw. I thought it was brilliant and inspired. They are really great at this school at combining the whole production concept with the kinds of things that 3-4 year olds will actually do. It makes me feel better about the fact that we are shelling out the "big bucks" (for Kyiv) to send her here. $500 a month may be low in the US, but if I'd sent her to the local Ukrainian pre-school it's 130 Ukrainian Hryvnia, or about $15 month. I justify it quite easily, and she loves her classmates, her Russian is better (I don't know if she speaks Ukrainian, but she must understand some since they speak to her in it), her art skills are growing by leaps and bounds, and of course, most importantly, she now has a video repetoire in case I ever become a momager and send her to Hollywood! So enjoy the snowball fight:
Shortly on the heels of the February performance is the mandatory International Women's Day performance. In case you didn't know, it falls on March 8 and is celebrated in over 100 countries. So this was the "Mommy" performance. They have the most heartbreakingly adorable songs, all revolving around "Momatchka." This time we were assigned the role of "Frog." You can imagine my delight. We are awash is animal-type costumes, but seriously, who owns a frog costume for their kid? And again, I am too cheap to rent a costume (I do have the numbers of two places, though, in case my thriftiness is threatened by a short deadline.) So I put her in green, made her a stomach and made some eyes for our hat. Thank you Mr. Internet for the ideas. Being goofy with the camera. All of the kids were doing their pre-play psyche and wanted to have their photos taken right up close to the camera.Here she is with some classmates, so you can see her classroom, and her teacher Irina over at the right. She's standing in the doorway to the room where they sleep. They have little trundle beds three deep. This being the former Soviet Union, they keep the room about 100 degrees even in the winter, so the kids sleep in their underwear. I think it's so hot the kids have no choice but to pass out.

So the little boy to her right is Joseph, who is a Canadian, and speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and English. To his right (the bee) is Samuel, who is a Slovakian-American and speaks English, Slovak, and Russian. I am starting to develop a complex that my poor children are only bi-lingual. But enough of my parental insecurities. Here are the great kids of her class.