Europe, particularly Germany, has wonderful Christmas Markets. Perhaps one year, we'll get to Germany for the Christmas Markets. There are various scales of these markets, and the quality of goods also varies. J's school even had a Christmas market a few weeks back that we attended. It was pretty good, with some decent area craftpeople.
Along the same vein, W and N's school had a Christmas Fair this past Friday evening. I wasn't really sure what it was all about, but various moms had told me to bring plenty of $$. I wasn't sure if that was for all the gifts I'd be buying, or all the things the kids would want, or all the food, or what I'd be spending all the $$ on.
The Headmistress was at the door with a basket, as admission was 1 pound/family. There were various booths selling things. The classes had made 2 crafts per child during school-one a Christmas bauble (what the English call an ornament) surrounded by foam with your child's photo in the middle (think Oriental Trading Post)-which you could purchase. Each year group also had another craft item the children had made-N's group made bookmarks, and W's group made keychains. These were for purchase as well. (There were also things for sale not made by children.) There was face painting, tattoos, food for sale, etc. When we reached the older year group's classroom, it was insane. All of the kids in that year group must have had to make up a holiday game, and run it. So there was homemade tabletop bowling-with Santa and penguin bowling pins, a homemade pinball game, suck the stryofoam "snowflakes" up with a straw from one bowl and release into a second bowl (there was a father doing this game repeatedly-he was very good at it!), snowball ringtoss, pin the snowball on Santa's hat, roll the snowball down the chute, guess the stuffed penguin's name etc, etc. Lots of creativity. And of course, there were fees involved with the games. Each one had a 3 tiered pricing approach (must've been a requirement)--1 go for 20pence, 2 goes for 40 pence, or 5 goes for 80 pence. The child running the game was collecting the money, it was very loud and chaotic. Of course, I had 2 kids wanting to play all the games-N only wanted one go at most of the games, but W was more into them. (J did not want to play.) This added another element of maths to the kids running the games. Kids got various awards of candy-we came home with so much!! Some of the games were unmanned, as the game's developer had wandered off. You could also visit Santa (Father Christmas) if you'd signed up for a time slot, and paid the fee, ahead of time, which I had not. I wanted to see how authentic it was first. So I figured out why I needed to bring lots of $$.
Most schools do not have the large scale fundraisers that schools do in the US. We come from a school that had 2 major fundraisers each year-the Haunted House, and the Dinner Auction-as well as many minor fundraisers. I have heard of school carnivals-I guess that's essentially what this Christmas Fair was. This school is a state school-similar to our public schools-which is most likely why there is not the level of fundraising that I am accustomed to in the States. J attends the US equivalent of a private school, and there have been no fundraising events that I'm aware of (although at the rate tuition is, they shouldn't need to fundraise!). I guess school funding is looked at differently here.
On Saturday (yesterday), we went to see Father Christmas. There is a guest blogger who would like to tell about this. If he has time this week, (around homework and playtime!), he will be posting. Otherwise, I'll be doing the post. Stay tuned!!
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