ancient worlds festival

last friday the boys' school had their spring festival, open house, school performance and academic culmination from the year long, school wide theme of ancient worlds.  the students spent all year learning about the 6 ancient civilizations that are the foundation of the world today; china, greece, rome, maya, egypt and medieval europe.  each grade specialized in a specific culture.  

at the ancient worlds festival the students get the chance to teach other students, parents, faculty and community members about what they have learned.  andrew was part of the mayan culture and jordan learned about ancient china.

i was part of the committee that organized and executed the end of the year academic festival.  this is the second year that we have had this type of event.  last year our theme was ecology and we ended the year with an eco fest.

the day started for me at 8:00 am helping to set up the continental breakfast for the volunteers.  then i moved on to decorating the tent for the performance and the welcome signs.

the students arrived at school at 12:30 and the school wide performance began at 1:00.  our faculty event coordinator wrote an original play that took the audience back in time to discover what was the greatest civilization of them all.  their were archeologists, gods, songs, and some really funny moments.

getting ready for the performance.  the kids made their ponchos and hats.

jordan's class was so lucky that one of the parents went to china earlier in the school year and brought each student a costume, hat and a dragon that they used in the performance.

the open house is also part of the day.  the kids show us around their classroom and we get to see some of the projects they have been working on in class.  here andrew is showing his grandparents his "create a state", dragon island.

then everyone went down to the field to start the booth activities.

i was so impressed with the creativity that the teachers, students and parent volunteers had in making each booth unique and representative of their culture.

each class has a booth that the teachers and the students come up with.  there are activities that let the children teach visitors about their culture.  in jordan's booth they had a game where you had to pick up small sponges with chopsticks.  they also made paper cutting bookmarks.

andrew is playing a bean bag toss game from the roman culture.  his total points scored determined what rank in society he is.  i am proud to say that they both came home as emperors.

andrew's class did the mayan game of pok-a-tok.  after learning a fact about mayan culture the kids tried to make a basket and move on to the next level.  

i didn't get a chance to visit all of the booths but there was a hit the target on the trojan horse with a catapult.  one of the dads actually built a trojan horse.  amazing.  and a coliseum with various games to compete in.

the kids collected coins at each booth and put them in a budget that was hanging on their belt.  at the end of the day the students redeemed their budget for a prize, an hourglass.  the whole idea was so clever.

we had an area for ancient games that included chess, 2 maypoles and a labyrinth created by our pto president and his wife, jennifer. 

there were medieval battles, an open air market, an art show, book fair, bouncy house and an italian dinner.  it was a jam packed day.  and it took a lot of work to put this together.  but what fun we all had.