Grade 2 Concert - Flat Stanley

Despite having had a broken night's sleep due to a very bad nightmare, the first thing Cherub said on Wednesday morning, in a high-pitched blend of excitement and nervousness was: Concert tonight! And once we got through the normal daily routine; breakfast, school, home again and dinner [early], the Hour arrived and it was time to head out to the theatre. We were the second to arrive, Cherub insisting we needed to leave now, let's go now! but before long the queue at the stage door was swarming with bouncing & shrill Grade 2 kids. A noisy, seething, squirming mass of 7 and 8 year-olds, ready after the weeks of rehearsal to bring their performance of The Adventures of Flat Stanley to life, on the big stage, in front of their friends and family.



The basic premise of the show was that each class had 2 songs, based on a locale where Flat Stanley had travelled. One song was was for dancing, one was for singing. Cherub's class had an island theme, so they danced to the Hawaiian Rollercoaster song ... here you see Cherub with his surfer dude stylings ...



...and sang Day-O (six foot, seven foot, eight foot, BUNCH!) which was just gorgeous.

I thought - of course I did - that Cherub did a fantastic job. He knew what to do, he did it very well and he looked like he was having fun. Interestingly, I could really see that although he has good use of his arm now, he'd learned the steps while it was still broken, so it was as if there was a trace of the plastercast in the quality of his movement. I was also very proud and slightly gratified to see how well my tap-dancing students who were in the show performed.

At the end of the show, all the children sang My Island Home, a song that makes me cry anyway (I suspect for vaguely patriotic reasons, how weird, but there it is), and never more so than when an adorable bunch of Grade 2 kids sing it with purity and gusto. I bawled happily.



Afterwards, we went for the traditional post-show gelati with Cherub's best friend. And then it was home. As I helped Cherub get ready for bed, he said now tonight just feels like every night with bathtime and bedtime. It's like the concert was in brackets. I really like that thought; that our life chugs along in routine and ritual and then every so often we squash in a special event, a colourful parenthetic interlude before bedtime.