This week is Catholic High School's English Language Arts Week. And the school has organised some activities for the children. The theme is 'Around the World in 80 days' - the classic book. It is indeed a classic book, just like what Mark Twain said, 'Classic - a book which people praise but don't read'. I have not read the book but roughly knew the storyline. So as to help him, we managed to borrow the book from the library even before the holidays.
Anyway, on April 6, the kids were supposed to turn up in school in a costume, made up of recycled and scrap materials, based on the ethnic clothing of selected countries. We were quite undecided on what to make my son wear. He was also not very forthcoming with suggestions. This is very typical of him - he is indecisive when faced with almost unlimited choices. Eventually, we decided on a Chinese emperor's costume. To keep with the material requirements, we sacrificed a bed sheet and a Transformer toy box. But to make it look nice, we went to Spotlight to buy some items.
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| My wife altering the bed sheet |
Using the box, we painstakingly transformed the box into an emperor's crown - not a Western-style crown, but the ones you see in Chinese period dramas. The crown turned out to be quite authentic, especially after gold wrapping paper was stuck on it. The emperor's clothes turned out a bit difficult. The bed sheet was not very cooperative - it gave him lots of bulk with little shape. Nevertheless, we decided not to bother with cutting the bed sheet up and sewing a costume. It was too time-consuming, and we were not too confident of achieving the effect. None of us had experience of making clothes after all.
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| The box that became a crown |
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| Can you see him? |
On the actual day, he did not look like a Chinese emperor. However, there were many praises for his costume from other parents, especially for his crown. At the parade square, all the children who wore costumes were made to parade around the square. Interestingly, there were students who did not come in costumes. I guess there are always parents who are not participative in fun activities. It was fun looking at the costumes. Some parents went way out of the way - I think they must come from St. James Kindergarten, who apparently trains parents (not kids) to do art and craft. On the flip side, I can see parents who cannot be bothered with the theme - one boy wore a Superman costume. I wonder how does Superman fit into 'Around the World in 80 Days' - Superman needs only a few nanoseconds to circumvent the world! After the walk by the students, they went up to the class, where the form teacher very quickly decided on the top five, who needed to wear their costumes again on Friday, for an another parade.
I thought that was it. My son has some more activities on Wednesday where there are booths featuring different countries, but that was it. Job completed and we can all go back to our life. I was a bit surprised when my wife told me that she was not happy with the result. She told me that even though she knew that the costume was not up to scratch, she felt that the costume should be in the top five (since there were some lousy ones). I knew what she meant - the form teacher had taken a grand total of 30 seconds to judge all the costumes - how could that really be fair to the kids (and the parents?). But I reasoned that it was not necessary to go and complain about this unfair judging. The most important was that she was fair to the children when it matters the most.
My son was not that badly affected by this decision. He did complain a little, but we pointed out to him that he did not do anything to make the costume, so he had no right to complain.
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| Pensive emperor |
I think that even though it is a small thing, a simple rubric must have been created and used for judging. Maybe there is, but the form teacher did not use it. I was certainly not impressed by this aspect of her work. But let me judge her by how she teaches and disciplines children. I certainly hope she excels in these two aspects.
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