St. Albert International Children's Festival

Thursday of this week, I got to help out with Miss A's kindergarten class field trip to the St. Albert International Children's Festival. My sister was nice enough to keep Mr. Q and Miss C for the day, so Miss A and I got to spend some quality time together, along with 16 other kids from her class.

They made these cute t-shirts to make it easier to keep track of all the kids. Each of the kids drew a self portrait and then someone must have Photoshopped them together. The back said, "En maternelle j'ai aimé.... (In kindergarten, I liked...) and each child wrote what they liked best. Miss A's shirt said, "Les chansons" (the songs). The shirts were cute, but they should have been neon green!  My favorite was one little boys that said he liked recess the best.
 I met the kindergarten class at their first activity at 9:30am at the booth for the St. Albert Art Gallery. It was called TransFORMation & it was really fun. They divided her class into three groups and they had 3 tables set up, which the groups rotated through.

The first was a table where the kids made these sculptures out of recycled bottles, toilet paper tubes, wire, packing bubbles, paper cups, etc. It was amazing what creative minds the kids had! The second table they were able to paper maché the sculptures that previous classes had made. The third table was set up to paint paper maché-ed sculptures from the day before that had already dried. It was a great project that the kids all seemed to really like.

The next activity was a trip to the Dinosaur Petting Zoo. It was a little scary for some of the kindergarten kids, but Miss A was okay. I think if she had been in the front row, it might have been a different story! The pic above right shows Miss A with her kindergarten teacher, Mme. Christiane.
It was a great (and tiring) day! They got to jump in bouncy castles, had a picnic lunch, Miss A got to sit in a firetruck & she had her face painted. Finally, at the end of the day we got some cotton candy and headed home.
 We had so much fun that I didn't want my other munchkins to miss out. The next day, when Miss A was at school, back I went with Miss C and Mr. Q in tow! My sister and her boys came along too. We hadn't bought tickets for the same activities that the kindergarten class had, so we just did some exploring on our own.

Mr. Q enjoyed sitting in the army jeep, though he didn't want to wear the headphones. Maybe when he's big enough to see over the dash! The combat engineers from the army base built a foot bridge across the Sturgeon River, I guess it might have been a training exercise, but it made it much more convenient to get to our car!

They also did some face painting while they were there. Miss C wasn't too interested in camo paint, so we headed over to the 'girl face paint' tent so she could get a flower, a ladybug and a butterfly. I'd have to say the line was much shorter for the camo.

We found a tent my the Education Station that had a great big sand table filled with plastic beads. The kids loved it. I won't even entertain the thought of getting one, though I know they would enjoy it. What a crazy mess! They also had this moon dough and these Magformers that the boys really liked.

One of the other things the kids were able to do was to paint with MONK. She starts a painting and then people add to her paintings, stroke by stroke. There was a painting she was working on that was really stunning. The kids, especially Mr. Q really enjoyed it. I had to physically pick him up and drag him away.

The kids also got to jump in the bouncy castle and went to a music making tent where they got to play with all sorts of different instruments and explore the sounds they made. It was quite a noisy venue, but fun. I'm just glad I didn't have to sit there all day! Before we left the kids got to have their first snow cones ever. They were very appealing to them, but when I tasted a bit, I realized that Slurpee's are much better.

When we got home, I was exhausted! Two days straight was probably too much for me. I'll probably take them again next year, but maybe spread it out a few days. I love summer!