Brown paper packages tied up with string...

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into spring, these are a few of my favorite things.

- Sound of Music

     Christmas time is my favorite time of the year.  I love the snow, decorations, hot drinks, and lingering.  As my sister and I have grown older Christmas has lost some of the magic.  This year celebrating with my kindergartners brought all of that magic back.  We celebrated Christmas with the Kindergarten on Wednesday.  Our school does not celebrate Halloween, so Christmas they are encouraged to wear costumes.  My 7 girls came in their princess finery and Jun, my only boy, came dressed as Rudolph.   

These are my girls shoes.  They are 6 and already wearing heels.  You see those gold shoes in the middle? Those have an inch heel and look like shoes ready for a tango.

Before they went on stage, they got to walk down the "runway" to show off their costumes.

This looks simple but honestly you have no idea how much work teaching them a simple song is.

 

The cutest performance was the Koalas class.  Its a class of 8, 5 year old girls.  The thought Santa Baby was about Santa as a baby.

The school had a puppet troupe come to perform at the school.  The show was completely in Korean so I really have no idea what the play was about but the children enjoyed it.

He doesn't look impressed but he loved his Rudolph costume.

The parents sent gifts in so that Santa could give them out.  My kids are getting to smart for their own good and only a few were really impressed with Santa.  However the younger kids were shaking they were so excited!

My favorite part of the day was the last 15 minutes.  Every part of our kindergartner's days are scheduled.  For the last 15 minutes of Wednesday they were allowed to relax on the floor and watch Christmas cartoons.  That also allowed me to just snuggle and hug them.  We all learned a very important lesson: Erin teacher's lap is not big enough to fit 8, 6 year olds.

During our Thanksgiving party I painted the kid's hands and put them on an ornament.  They completely forgot about them until I surprised them as a Christmas present.

Here are two of my Korean co-workers.  Aimee is on the left and Paula, the owner and principal, on the right.

Two weeks ago was also my birthday.  On the Saturday following my friends and I spent the day eating amazing food, cake, and trying an escape room.

We failed to escape in the hour, there was to much math involved.

None of my students remembered my birthday, but one of the other 6 year olds did.  She even had her mom call the school to ask how to spell my name.

Gifts from kindergartners are very interesting.  This is from my student Eloise.  The card says: Dear Erin Teacher.  I love to learn with you.  What do you do at night? Love, Eloise.  

Then the bag says: I love your plan because it is fun.  

She knows about my secret moonlighting as a superhero obviously.

The best parts of their presents though are the little treasures that are obviously so important to them.  These things came in Eloise's package.  She even gave me instructions of what to do with the shiny paper.  I am supposed to cut a shape out and then use it as a sticker.

During our December birthday party, the Korean staff also got a cake for me.

Two of my coworkers and I visited Lotte World.  It is a knock-off Disney World.  The beauty of Disney is that every detail has been thought of, not so much at Lotte World.  Its also very strange because 90% of the park is inside this huge building.

There is even a princess castle outside.

Friday we had the Christmas party with the elementary aged kids.  I thought teaching the kindergartners a song was difficult, but teaching the elementary kids a song and dance was like pulling teeth.  

This is my favorite class to teach and my favorite song that my classes sung.  Daniel, the boy, was really excited and found the a capella Pentatonix version online.  He really wanted to sing the full version with him singing dum, dum, da-dum but unfortunately the Korean teacher cut that part at the last minute.  

I only teach this class once a week so I cannot claim that I had anything to do with this song.  Its just so amazing that I had to share.

These are my oldest students and they fought me the hardest on learning the song and dance.  Thankfully they pulled it off.

I was supposed to fly out to Bali at 9:00 but my flight has been delayed until 11:00.  So now I am wasting time until I have to leave.  Just one more day and I will be on a tropical island!  Merry Christmas everyone!