Literacy Night and St. Patrick's Day

We had a great time at what we are hoping is the First Annual Family Literacy Night. Families came and enjoyed activities like super reader cupcake decorating, wack-a-mole with rhyming words, comic strip creation, word games, super reader mask decorating, reading, and a book exchange. It was great to see everyone who attended, especially the little future Roland School students.

Cupcake Decorating

Families Arriving

Wack-a-Mole

It was a tremendous amount of fun for our staff to see families and meet new people. Literacy is at the core of everything we do in education and celebrating books and creativity is important.

For me, a highlight was discovering a 1928 book titled "Millions of Cats". It turned out to be the story of an old man and woman who were lonely so the man went to get a cat. He discovered "millions and billions and trillions of cats" and tried to pick one out. Alas, he couldn't pick just one cat so he brought them all home where they ate all the grass (do cats eat grass?) and drank up the whole pond. The man and wife decided they could only keep one and asked the cats which one was the prettiest. They started fighting over who was the prettiest which caused the man and wife to retreat into their house. When they emerged, the cats had "eaten each other up" and there was just one small kitten left. He explained that because he hadn't said he was the prettiest, everyone had left him alone and now he was the only one left. He grew big and happy with the man and woman.

Some debate ensued among staff about the moral of the story. Some argued it was about the dangers of vanity. Some suggested it had to do with environmental sustainability. In the end I believe it is a straightforward message. If you have a simple task that needs to be done (like going to get a cat), don't send your husband. He'll make a mess of it. My wife agrees with me.

On another note, St. Patrick's Day is today and our resident Leprechaun O'Malley has been up to his annual hi-jinx. Tossing classrooms and kidnapping the principal (it was pretty scary) were part of his routine this year. The search is on to catch him.

What a Mess!

Kidnapped