Monday, December 04, 2006

Christmas School Tour

Today was Ben's school outing and I was asked by Ben's teacher to help with supervision. Lucky me, a trip to the theatre. We went to The Mill Theatre in Dundrum to see Santa and the Present Pirates. All the children had been warned to be at school nice and early as the buses were coming at 9am. My first job was to ensure that all the children went to the toilet and washed their hands so there would be no emergencies on the bus. Next job was to see if the buses had arrived, 9am saw no sign of them (luckily for the child that arrived late), 9.05am still no sign. 9.10am hurray here's a bus.

Three classes were going on this trip and there was great excitement as the children walked out to the buses, I mean bus. Oh dear, a problem. The bus takes 53 people we have 82. So the bus driver rings the other bus, he's lost then our drivers credit runs out. Half the children get on the bus the rest are left standing in the cold. Bus driver rings back and is guided to the school. Second bus arrives 9.20am.

At 9.30am everyone is on a bus and strapped in so off we go. Our bus diver gets us to Dundrum in 15 minutes and then expertly parks in a tiny place that I thought was too small for a bus. No sign of the other bus. We were the first school into the theatre and were seated right at the front but still no sign of the children who travelled in the other bus (Ben included). Finally they turned up, apparently bus driver number two had dropped them off in the wrong place and they had had to walk through a shopping centre, down escalators and across a plaza to get to the theatre.

The show was great fun and just perfect for the children. The bad pirates stole all of Santa's presents on Christmas Eve. So Santa, Poogle (the elf), Twinkle (the fairy) and Myrtle (the mermaid) travelled to the Caribbean to rescue the presents. Some of the children were afraid of the pirates so I had a little boy on my lap for the show, he was still able to shout very loud and join in with all the fun. All ended well, Santa got his presents back, Poogle was brave and defeated the pirates, Twinkle found her magic, Myrtle and Poogle fell in love and the Pirates became good and helped Santa deliver the presents.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Beccy: Thanks for your contribution to Menu For Hope III. The gift looks lovely! Please be sure to feature it, and the auction on your site, with links for your readers to bid on your fabulous prize starting December 11.

sallywrites said...

Hi Beccy

That's really wierd! Whe i was in Northern Ireland I ran a theatre in education company with friend of mine - Pip. we callled it Pippin Alley. Our main christams play that we wrote for the children was called "the Lost Toys". in our play Santa's toys had been stolen by a rogue gnome - who it turned out in the end to be Rumplestiltskin.Totally repentant and never to be nasty again.... We were the fairies - Pip and I, and needless to say they were called Tinsel and Twinkle. We employed our friend Enid (who wrote on my entry "Away with the Fairies") yesterday to play the part of Rumplestiltskin, and we inlcuded lots of panto stuff, a bit of magic and some audience participation. We had a similar formula for all our plays.

I'll forward this to Enid. She'll be staggered.

Brilliant memories!

I guess they are consistent story themes for children - but it is spookily similar nevertheless.

Sounds like you had a great day out though!!

Sally

ChrisB said...

'Drama' !! is all part of the fun. Did Ben enjoy it ? Was this part of your parent association role?

Beccy said...

Will do David.

What a coincidence Sally. I'm sure your play was as much fun as the one we saw today.

No Mum, I was asked as a parent. There are very few parents (5) with no younger siblings so the chances of being asked to help out are quite high. I was pleased to go, it was good fun.