Fantastic Fable Festival

The look on my daughter’s face when I told her that I was able to change her dr appointment (again) so she could attend the fable festival for her writing class at our tutorial, was one I don’t want to forget.

It was one of those times when I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was to her.  But, when I told her I was able to switch her appointment, her face lit up.  She instantly grabbed the Aesop’s Fables book to look for a costume she could put together.  We were able to put together a pretty good butterfly costume so she could dress up as the Butterfly and the Rose.

We just scanned down the table of contents for characters that we thought we could pull off…. “don’t we have a lion costume?”  “too small”  hmmmm wanna be a rabbit, we could make ears and attach them to a headband?”  “a butterfly?” We remembered wings in the costume bin, I had some paint in the cabinet… then we went for pink and sparkly…. we remembered the silk flower she had given me years before (because it was a flower that would never die) which was in a vase on my dresser… and we had a fable costume.

Then we read the actual fable.

And it did not seem at all appropriate for a fourth grader to read aloud in class. Nor did I even agree with the moral it presented. 

So, we opted for dressing like one fable (the butterfly and the rose) but reading the fable she had rewritten for her writing class. 

She even wanted to bring a snack…. all on less than 24 hours notice… but a trip to Safeway and a scan of the internet helped us find a butterfly snack, which the girls totally put together on their own.  (snack food in a sandwich bag separated in the middle with a rubber band and attached a pipe cleaner on top for antennae).  It really was all her doing.  It was her thing. 

And we almost missed it.  In the scurry of life and in my not wanting to embarrass myself by calling the dr twice in a week to reschedule her appointment, I almost had her miss the party.  And on one hand, it’s just a one hour party… costume, snacks and fables…. not a life changer.  But, on the other hand, it’s these parties and projects that are one of the very reasons we attend a tutorial.  I want them to have these fun moments at school.  I want school to be more than just following the tasks on the assignment sheet.  I want the creativity to flow and the memories to be made.  

And I know for a fact that the fable party probably wouldn’t have mattered so much to all of my kids.  But, it did matter to her.  And I thoroughly enjoyed watching her prepare for it.  I am grateful for our tutorial for many reasons….and this years fantastic, fabulous fable festival for fourth graders was one of them.