La Kermesse and a school year round up

There are only 2 weeks of term left before Les Grandes Vacances, it's gone really quickly and my little girl has really grown up since last September.

first day at school, Sept 2010

Yesterday was the culmination of the school year which is celebrated by La Kermesse! Also known as the school fete, fair or whatever you might want to call it. It rained pretty much most of the time, so we had to drag the stalls under whatever cover was available to keep dry. The "spectacle" or the show put on by the kids and teachers was under the rain, but they did delay it a little bit so it wasn't under the enormous deluge at least!

La Kermesse in the rain

You may remember I joined the school committee at the start of the year. As a quick reminder it's the money raised by the committee that pays for all school supplies, outings and events, as well as the morning gouter. The only thing a parent pays for in a typical french primary school would be the lunch and any before school or after school care that they provide for working parents. I think once a child is in secondary school parents are expected to pay for the supplies themselves, but I'm not 100% sure on that one.

Laila's class has been on 3 cinema trips, 1 theatre trip and 1 farm visit. I went along on the farm one just a couple weeks ago and we all had a really lovely time.

Laila and her best friend Elise at the farm

Petting the rabbits, each kid got a wheelbarrow and a rabbit each, such fun!

In one school year we have managed to raise money through selling the school photos, the Christmas trees, Christmas chocolates and games, numerous cake sales, Easter chocolate tombola,  Bread bags with the kids drawings on for Mothers & Fathers Day's and the school fete.

Laila in "Mon sac a pain"

The kids drawings on the other side

By the way we have a handful of these bags left if anyone wants to buy one?!

So La Kermesse was our biggest event of the year and OMG did we work hard to get it together. There are only 6 of us on the committee, with one extra helper when she can. The teachers do NOTHING, and I really mean NOTHING!  This is not typical of French schools by the way, just this particular school and it's the foundation of all the problems that this school has. My sister in law is a primary school teacher and to hear her talk of everything she does and organises for her class makes me realise how bad ours is. Also there are very few other parents who are willing to lend a hand. I believe there is a story behind this, there were problems with the old committee a few years ago, they made a lot of enemies amongst the parents and so nobody wants to help anymore.

I'm not going to go on about it too much here, you will see a future post about the decision Francois and I have made re Laila's schooling soon.

However despite any complaints we may have as a committee about the teachers and the other parents, there was still a very good turn out, even with all the rain. Sadly we couldn't offer loads of stalls as there weren't enough of us to run them, but we managed a bar, face painting, 2 fishing games, ducks for the little ones and prizes for the big ones. Darts, skittles and palets bretons (which according to Wikipedia is a form of Shove Ha'penny or shuffleboard in England). I was so busy I didn't get to see the game so I don't even know what it looked like! Francois and I ran the ticket stand and the guess how many sweets in the jar competition! There was also a raffle, with some really great prizes we managed to collect from local businesses. The first prize was a family holiday donated by Pierre & Vacances, we were really pleased to bag that one, it helped us sell 1500 tickets!

The Spectacle which is the one thing organised by the teachers, was a bit of a mess but turned out well. We had all of 2 seconds to get Laila ready and had to shove her in the middle to do the dance with her class. She was of course not happy about that, and didn't really get going till the 2nd dance. I've just watched the video and it's very cute so prepare yourselves!