Today was the big day, Kaia’s End of the Year performance at Kids Central. The children had been practicing for about two weeks and Kaia was a frog. Indiamama had sewn him some frog flippers and we bought him a nice lime green shirt and shorts to match the headpiece that was given to us by the school. While there were some practice that we needed to do with his jumping beforehand, he knew the songs and seemed excited for the performance.
We got there early and, like many of the other first-time parents, were jockeying for a front row seat with still and video cameras in tow. Of course, as the more experienced parents know, the front row isn’t the best place to videotape. Anyway, the theme was “creepy crawlies” and at 9:45 am the procession made its way out—bees, spiders, snakes, cockroaches, ladybugs and, of course, frogs. Maybe it was because it was my first experience with this kind of performance, but man, these kids were CUTE! Kaia took his place on his ‘cross’ and the show began.
Within each group of creepy crawlies, there were four to five children, and each group had its own song. For the frogs, it was sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and the lyrics (as taught to me by Kaia) were:
Little green frog likes to hop,
Hoppin and hoppin and hoppin and hop.
Hop here, hop there, hop hop everywhere,
Hopping and hopping and a hop, hop, stop.
So, when it came to the four frogs, they were supposed to get into the frog squat and then hop their way to the center of the stage where they would all sing their song. Kaia made it to the squat position, but that was it. From that point on he froze. Of course, the other three kids moved with varying degrees of accuracy and one of the other children just decided to walk to the middle. It took Kaia’s teacher picking him up and simulating hopping to the middle of the stage to get him to move.
Yet, getting him there really didn’t make a difference. It just meant that he went from being frozen on the periphery to being frozen in the middle. Again, Valli came in and moved him around with the parts of the song and the entire time he had the same Kaia-face that he gets when he’s not quite sure how to process all that’s going on.
I had predicted to indiamama that this would happen as Kaia does not like to be put on the spot in a large group. He can be so outgoing in situations where he understands the setting, but for these kinds of circumstances where there are 70+ clapping parents, it is predictable that he would clam up. For me it was not so painful to watch, and I was laughing the entire time (he didn’t look pained himself) as it was so cute to see him frozen there in a squat.
After all of the children did their little performance, it was time for graduation—for children who are either moving on to elementary school or moving away from the area. Kaia fits into the latter and this was a great opportunity for him (and me) to have some closure on this really great, formidable experience. Kaia was given a sash, graduation certificate and sweet poster with the handprints of all of the children and a poem and photo, for him to remember Kids Central by. I know that he is probably too young, but I would like to think that his time at Kids C has really helped him to be challenged and grow. It makes me a bit sick to think about finding a new school and safe place for him to grow in the
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