This past Friday marked the last day of school before the 2 week vacances de printemps* (spring break), and Cherry's maternelle celebrated with a costumed parade around the neighborhood. Thursday morning at school they began the process of constructing their couronnes de printemps (spring crowns), with each class making them in a different style. As you might expect, they were all green with some type of flowers on them. The petite section (the 3 year olds) painted plus signs on their crowns in a variety of colors (reddish-orange and blue in Cherry's case). Once the paint had dried, they glued crumpled tissue paper to the center of the plusses to turn them into flowers. The moyenne section (the 4 year olds) glued a variety of cut paper flowers onto their crowns. (Unfortunately I was never close enough to the kids in the grande sections (the 5 year olds, i.e. kindergarteners) had done with theirs.
Friday at lunch time when I went to pick Cherry up from school, her teacher reminded me that if she wanted to be in the parade she would need to be dropped back off at the school at 3:00 so that everyone would be ready to go at 3:15. So, after lunch and a very speedy trip to the grocery store, we put Cherry into her costume (which consisted of a frilly pink tunic of Sapphire's and a fairy wand, since we're a bit short on dress up stuff here) and headed over to the school.
When we got there, we discovered that the all day kids were already in their costumes, and that many of them were substantially more elaborate than Cherry's, but that no one else had an origami magic wand. So I gave Cherry hugs and kisses and assured her that I would be there to pick her up after the parade, and then I headed back over to our apartment to suggest to Blaise that we go down to see them come out of the school complex. Around 3;15 we started to see green crowned children marching across the grounds deux par deux (2 by 2), as always, and toward the gate. The gardien buzzed them out and they headed out for their parade. Blaise smiled and waved at Cherry, who looked quite proud of herself, and headed back to the apartment to work, and I joined the gaggle of milling parents who followed the parade, attempting to get a better picture.
In essence, the kids walked about halfway around the school, reentering the complex through the back gate, and we followed with them as far as the entrance to the playgrounds of the other maternelle. At that point, we had a problem. Cherry, evidently, hadn't realized that she was supposed to go back into the school after the parade, and furthermore, she wasn't used to going into the school through the back way, so she promptly stopped walking and started crying and tried to run to me. Her teacher (who is also the director of the school) took one look at what was happening and told me to go with her, then brought the rest of the parents out of the back gate and re-locked it.
All the kids went into their classrooms long enough to drop their crowns on the tables, and then headed back outside to play on the playground and eat the waffles and crepes that were provided as a celebratory snack. Unfortunately, because of the snacks, all of the kids were on the same playground, instead of the two they are normally divided onto. Cherry took one look at all the unfamiliar 5 year olds on the playground and decided that she would not, for any reason, go more than 6 inches from me, so we sat and watched the other kids playing and accepted compliments on Cherry's beautiful baguette magique. Eventually, I convinced her that we should at least get her a couple of pieces of waffle, and that I wasn't going to pick them up for her, and she managed to do that, though not without some difficulty.
Then, we all went back inside for the last few minutes of the day. The kids who went to aftercare were swiftly changed into their regular clothes by the aide maternelle, and then there was chaos as everybody tried to grab their crowns and their books of work (which come home for our perusal every vacation) and show off their beautiful costumes for the last time. We headed for the exit (I was impressed to see that they had already put up pictures of the parade for those parents who hadn't been able to come and watch it), and then toward Sapphire and Ezio's school, where we met Blaise and the big kids on their way home.
*In case you were wondering, yes, we did just (6 weeks ago) finish our 2 week winter vacation (which came 6 weeks after the end of Christmas vacation), and we also just had Easter Monday off. We also have 4 day school weeks. And although the school day goes from 9:00 to 4:30, they have 2 breaks of 20 minutes and an hour and a half for lunch. Next time someone starts telling you about how much more time kids in other countries spend in class, you will be able to laugh loudly at them.
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