The Fairy Tale Ball

Every year at Allison's school, each grade level has a special event. Last year in kindergarten, you may recall Allison experienced Japan Day, which involved taking a pretend plane ride to Japan and learning all about the culture of living in Japan. This year, as first graders, they spent several weeks learning about medieval times which culminated with a Fairy Tale Ball. They were told to dress up as a specific fairy tale character or simply a queen, king, prince or princess. Allison, of course, wanted to be a princess or a queen. We borrowed a dress from a friend, added a few accessories and Allison looked like a true princess:

After Allison arrived at school in her modern day chariot (aka Toyota Highlander) she went into her classroom which was decorated for the special occasion:

Once everyone arrived, the first thing they did was a craft. The students had to make a picture of themselves (using various materials) which closely resembled the outfit they were wearing and on Monday they are going to write a story to go along with the picture. I think Allison's came out pretty good:
After the craft, they went to the media center to watch Little Red Riding Hood and then watched a puppet show. Then they had their pictures taken on the royal throne:
Up next was the big event - the dance! Each girl was paired up with a boy and they performed a dance that they had been practicing for weeks. The music room at the school was transformed into a ballroom, which I had the pleasure of spending 4 hours the day before to help set up. Here is the video of the dance. It was just too cute!



After the dance I took some pictures of Allison in the ballroom:


Next, the kids learned about archery and how to shoot a bow and arrow. They didn't actually get to shoot it, for safety reasons of course, and this part was a little disturbing because the man talked about how he kills animals and such. But the kids enjoyed watching him shoot the arrows at a target:
Afterwords, the kids played a round of fairytale Jeopardy and then headed back to their classroom for the royal feast which consisted of a chicken leg, grapes, cheese and bread:

For dessert they each made a magic wand out of a pretzel, icing and some sprinkles:

And finally, Allison posed for a picture with her teacher:
It was a magical day indeed!