Our little Dakota...

Thursday night (January 11th) was the first grade musical - How Does Your Garden Grow?. All three first grade classes participated in the performance, something they have been preparing for since the first week of school, and it was absolutely fantastic! They sang six songs - Planting Seeds, We are the Loveliest Flowers, Weeds Rule! (done wrap style ... watch out pansies, weeds rule!), The Garden Hoedown (I thought for sure the risers were going to collapse during this song), How does your garden grow?, and a reprise of Garden Hoedown - each with its own choreography.

Between the songs, 15 or so first graders were given speaking parts to help tell the story of the garden. Rebecca was given the part of Herb, the gardener, who has four different speaking parts throughout the performance. She got lots of compliments for having her lines so well memorized this week for their practices and final dress rehearsal for the school Thursday afternoon.

GR and I both were very impressed with the creativity of the children's costumes (unless given a specific part, they were asked to dress as something found in the garden - flower, vegetable, weed, butterfly, etc), how well they sang their songs and recited their lines. I am really looking forward to future grade programs with this music teacher - she is wonderful!

We did record the entire performance, and we are planning to put all 25 minutes up in segments on youtube. So watch for that update tomorrow evening.

Rebecca with some of her classmates before the performance: Echo, Christopher, Dimonique, Rebecca and Gavin. Below is Rebecca talking to the audience "Hi, my name is Herb. I'm the Gardner here. The H is silent you know."


Because it was a special night we decided to go to DQ for ice cream instead of racing home to make bedtime. Everyone really enjoyed their ice cream cones, shakes, sundaes and concretes.


For those wondering what's up with Rebecca's cheek. Wednesday at the end of lunch recess, she tripped on the edge of the black top and did a face plant on the asphalt. Not only did she get that nasty scrape on her cheekbone, but she also managed to bruise the upper right portion of her lip turning it a nice shade of dark purple. Thankfully it's healing quickly and hasn't bothered her since it happened. Here's a close up of her cheek from the performance, so it's a good 30 hours or so after it happened.