Today we experienced another Australian first - a school Athletics Carnival. All the kids from Kindergarten, Year One and Year Two rode chartered buses over to one of the town fields to spend the day running races and having fun outside.
They divided the kids into three houses and asked them to come dressed in their house colors - either Garnet, Saphire or Amber. Emily and Tess were thrilled to have a day off from wearing their school uniforms. We don't have a lot of non-school clothes to chose from so we made do with pink striped shirts. Families are kept together so Emily and Tess got to be in the same house. They were joined by three of Emily's closest friends from 1S - Maya, Julia and Frances.
The teachers sorted the first races by age. Tess ran in the youngest set with kids who turn five this year. As we dressed for school she looked concerned and claimed she didn't want to run in any races but once there she gamely competed. She came in third in her race and got to wear a special ribbon for the rest of the day.
Emily ran with the turning seven set. She came in second. She really seemed to enjoy it. I can definitely picture her running track one day.
After the age based races they shifted to some silly events - egg and spoon race, a three legged race, hop like a frog, wear ski clothes and the like. I had gone home for lunch by that point but another mum got this great photo of Tess with her apron, egg and spoon.
All told they both had a lot of fun. Their school does a good job of keeping them outside and active, encouraging competition but also just making it fun. They have a wonderful sense of community. Having days like this also assuages some of my guilt over keeping the girls in school for June, July and August while their American counterparts are heading off on summer vacation. I guess we had our carefree summer days in January. We have a two week holiday coming again in July and we've just booked our tickets to Bali so really these kids have a pretty good life.
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