Homeroom Mom

I've never been a homeroom mom before this year. I guess I'm still not. It's called a parent liaison in our district. It means that you have to trim and count boxtops periodically. It also means that you have to make sure that all the parties are planned. You don't have to do it yourself, but you need to secure a volunteer. I didn't fully understand the role when I volunteered to be the parent liaison for not one but two of my kids.

One of my children is in fifth grade. That translates to the sixth and final year of school parties. Many fifth grade parents have already planned parties. Most fifth grade parents have all of their children in school full time. They work. And fifth graders are not particularly cute anymore. All this equates to being blessed if one parent signs up to coordinate a single party. Such was the fate of our fifth grade Christmas party. I had begged off Halloween to a neighbor and am fortunate to have a volunteer for the year end party. So, I took over.

We painted ornaments. We used droppers to drizzle paint into clear glass balls and swirled it around. One parent volunteer mentioned that it tied in well with the modern art presentation that she had just done with the class. (She is the art outreach parent. What do the teachers do these days?) Just luck. My son doesn't deem such events worthy of relaying.

Did you notice that they aren't terribly cute? Except the short one in the red sweatshirt.

While some were painting, others were decorating gift bags for the ornaments.

My son made Frosty the Serial Killer.

We also played reindeer games. As I was the official, I asked Tim to pose for me. He's a very serious reindeer racer.We had cookies, Chex mix and juice. It took about an hour and nobody complained to me. Drew told me that some of the boys said that the reindeer games were stupid, but two of them asked if they could take the deer home. How stupid could it have been?

I've learned that if you ask a parent to send in something specific, they are happy to help. Many even express their gratitude that you were willing to plan the party and make all the calls for the sake of their child's happiness. I also learned that in addition to red, green, gold, blue, silver and white paint, Illini orange should be on hand. And I met a very nice neighbor with a daughter in the class.

If anyone needs plans for a Christmas or Halloween party appropriate for grade 3-5, I'll sell them to you. Check back in 6 weeks because it looks like I'll be marketing the third grade Valentine's Day party at that time.