4th grade party

The next week, I was in charge of Brooke's class party!  She was incredibly excited for the party, and although I was also excited, I was a little nervous after the chaos of Colby's party.  None of the other parents volunteered to help, so I texted Sidney's mom and asked if she could come to the party and help me out!!  She was totally willing, and since she was coming to help set up, Brooke and Sidney were able to stay behind and help set up while the rest of the class waited for us in the library. 

I snagged a quick picture in the 4th grade hall :) They had a whole Polar Express Day a few days prior...

These two helped me arrange all the desks, lay tablecloths, set out the place settings, get the food ready, and make the final plan for the games and activities. 

We served donuts (which thankfully I pre-ordered because the donut store was absolutely nuts the morning of the party), fruit, and chocolate/regular milk. 

A handful of parents showed up to the party, so they were helpful in serving the food to the kids.

After they ate, I passed out the Winter Journal kits I found on Oriental Trading Company. Again, I overestimated their crafting ability because the kids had a hard time creating the binding, but thankfully the few kids that got it were able to help the others. (Colby made the sample, so I figured that if a 1st grader could do it, the 4th graders would have no problem, haha.)

After the journals, we moved on to the games!  We started with a hilarious "Boys vs Girls" game of ringtoss on inflatable antlers.  Brooke was wearing the antlers for the girl team, and I saw firsthand how ridiculous a girl name Madison is.  Brooke has had issues with this girl since the beginning of the school year, but she was bossy and rude to Brooke and the other girls.  She was blaming Brooke for her inability to make one of the rings on the antlers.  Since Brooke was helping me with the games, she gave an instruction to Madison, and her response was, "You're not in charge here, you better get that in your head."  (I could write a whole post about this girl and the way I finally had to get involved with the teacher and the school counselor.  But the bottom line is that after reaching out, and her teacher going to watch the girls at recess, she told me that it was 100% "the other student's" attitude and that Brooke was doing exactly as I had encouraged her to do, which was to play with the boys and stay away from her.)

Then we played a fun cup stacking game (boys vs girls), the chocolate bar game (where you have to unwrap the chocolate with oven mitts on your hands and pass it around the circle when the person next to you rolls doubles on a set of dice), and ended with the Parlor game (basically a combination of charades and taboo). The kids would've loved for the game to carry on, but we only had an hour and half for the party and then the kids were supposed to go to Enrichment.  

Brooke helped clean up and I loved seeing her interact with her teacher, Ms. Gutierrez.  She loves her SO much and I enjoyed seeing their sweet relationship. She's emailed me several times throughout the year to tell mer what an absolute joy Brooke is to have in her class.  Those types of messages always make my heart super happy. 

Again, I didn't get many pictures of Brooke during the party since I was busy hosting the whole thing, but I did get one after we loaded up the car with all the party supplies :)

I checked her out of school early so that we could enjoy some one on one time together before going back to pick Colby up.