This is why I do it

Yesterday was Family Fun Night. For the second time since Hannah has been at her school I have chaired the committee for this event. Each year the PTO chooses a theme (literature, math, science, history, geography, etc.) and creates a fun night for the kids to come in with their parents and go around to every room and learn new things through arts and crafts, games, and different exhibits. Each room typically has a few different things plus some activity sheets that the kids can take with them (coloring sheets, connect the dots, etc.)

The first time I did FFN our theme was "Explore the Continents" and these are a few of the main things we did in each room. In Antarctica (which was the room I did) we had snow cones for the kids to eat, a penguin craft, and "snowball" fights with penguin themed beach balls and cotton balls. Africa had a drum circle and the mancala game. Asia had a karate demonstration and a lesson on how to pick up cotton balls with chopsticks. In South America one of the mom volunteers built "the rain forest at night" and actually built a huge tree in an empty classroom and glued plastic birds and frogs to it. She put up white Christmas lights to make it look like a starlit night and as every kid went into the room they were given a flashlight and a list of animals to find. In Australia we had a local animal habitat bring in a few animals including a kangaroo. North America had a wonderful quilting activity and in Europe they got to build the Leaning Tower of Pisa and knock it over plus design their own mosaics.

The theme for this year was History and we told the kids they'd be "traveling through time". Between being sick and not being terribly excited about the room that I assigned myself, I definitely put a lot of the stuff for last night off until the last minute. But the biggest problem that I had was that I could not get the volunteers that we needed because a lot of people weren't willing to step up. Out of about 400 families in the school I managed to get about 15-20 volunteers for this free event benefiting all of our students.

I must say, I was sort of dreading last night because I wasn't sure how it would turn out. I should have known better though. I was blown away by what my committee pulled together. I may not have had a lot of volunteers but the ones that I did were incredibly dedicated. We had six rooms last night. In Music/Toys/Dance we had old games that kids could play including an Atari, an exhibit showing everything from the record player and the 8-track up through the iPod. Tracy dressed up in a poodle skirt and got the kids doing dances from different decades. We had a Colonial room that had so much going on I couldn't possibly describe it all but the kids had 2-3 different crafts to choose from, a Thanksgiving table where they could get stuff to eat, and much more including a woman sitting up on the stage spinning yard. In the Wild West the kids got to pan for gold, got to play in a tepee, and sit around the fire pit. In Transportation there was a wonderful display of all sorts of ways we've developed planes, trains, and cars over the decades and the kids got to make paper airplanes and fly some model airplanes around the room. In Literature/Folklore the kids had story time, a person teaching sign language, and a canoe craft. All the stuff was based from one childhood story or another (Helen Keller, Pocahontas, etc.)

And then there was my room. My hallway actually since I had the 2nd floor hallway in the 1st grade wing of the school. My theme was Communication and I broke that down into five areas: Morse Code, Pony Express, Telephones, Post Office, and IM/Texting. For Morse Code I had a song playing on the CD player called "The Rhythm of the Code" which went through every letter of the alphabet and what it sounds like in Morse Code. For the Pony Express the kids got to make their own pony puppets out of paper, yarn, and wooden sticks. Hannah was a huge help and ran that craft for me during a good chunk of the night. For IM/Texting I had a slide show playing of different text abbreviations (LOL, BRB, TTYL, etc.) and what they translated to. In the Post Office area Lincoln built me a mini post office and the kids got to write their teachers a letter and mail them. For the telephone section I had pictures of everything including the original telephone, the novelty telephones (the hamburger phone for example) the huge, chunky first type of cell phone, the bag cell phone, and everything up through the iPhone. I also had a rotary dial phone that the kids could play with. I think the best part of planning this event was yesterday morning when Jake discovered the rotary dial phone in our office. It was completely beyond his comprehension at first and he could not figure out for the life of him how it worked. He wouldn't put his fingers in the hole but kept trying to push on the printed numbers outside the dial. I wish I had gotten it on video. It was truly priceless.

I had been completely desperate for volunteers so my little sis Kristen said she'd bring me some of her soccer team from Franklin High School. She showed up with SEVEN of her teammates and I could have kissed each and every one of them. They were a huge lifesaver and really helped me pull it all off.

Lincoln was a huge help with the prep work and then spent the entire evening chasing Jake around the rooms once it started. We barely saw Hannah all night. If she wasn't up in the Communications room teaching the kids how to do the crafts she was running around and checking out the other rooms with her friends. Overall it was a great night and even though I was hating every moment leading up to it when it came down to the actual event - and it was running like clockwork - I realized why I do this to myself (and to Lincoln). Because the kids LOVED it. To see them running around and trying new things and exploring new ideas and just plain having a blast, THAT is why I do it. For them.

But as delightful as those shiny, little, happy faces were last night, I'm done. No more. I'm going on record as saying I will never chair another Family Fun Night.

Here is a picture of Tracy getting ready to dance. Notice the boys glued to the Atari game in the background....boys never change. That was evidenced by the fact that whenever someone lost their father (or husband) during the evening they could usually be found playing the Atari.

Jake in the Wild West:

Hannah outside the Wild West jail where kids could toss their parents in jail before paying $1 to bail them out: