Thanksgiving Feast & Stone Soup

The week before Thanksgiving, Malcolm's school had a Thanksgiving Feast where all of the kids helped prepare the meal, and then performed a play, "Stone Soup."

Kevin got there before I did and said that Malcolm was sitting all by himself eating.  The notices said that parents were welcome at 12:30, and we were there a little before that, but it seemed like most everyone else was already there.  Luckily, this did not seem to bother Malcolm at all.

The kids made turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, lettuce salad, three kinds of fruit salads, corn muffins, and pumpkin and apple pies.  Malcolm gorged himself on fruit salads, but also had some macaroni & cheese and a corn muffin.  There was plenty extra that they were trying to get rid of, so Dorothy had a lot of turkey.



We asked Malcolm if he helped make anything and he said, "No."  The other mother sitting at the table told me that the kids did make everything.  Based on things he said later, I think he might have done the flower arrangements for the tables.

After the meal, was the play.  If you had asked me ahead of time, I would have guessed that Malcolm would be the one just standing there frozen, not doing anything.  He tends to do that when he feels shy or uncomfortable and I wasn't sure what he would think about singing and dancing in front of a large group.  I could not have been more wrong.  He didn't sing every song, but he sang what he could, and did all of the actions.  That was nice and we were very proud of him.


Growling like a monster because their tummy is grumbling.




He did not have any speaking lines in the play, but that did not stop him from shouting out after every song, "Mommy!  Did you hear that?" with his hands held up to his mouth.  He must have done it 5 or 6 times.  The first time, everyone giggled, by the end all of the parents were laughing really hard and turning around to look at me.  After the first 2 or 3 times, everyone was just waiting for it.  Unfortunately, I didn't know when the ends of the songs were, so I only caught the very last one, at the end.  You can't really hear him because the audience is clapping.  Every other time, he waited for silence before shouting to me.  I am hoping that someone else from the school will send me a copy of their video with him shouting.  Unfortunately, I am not able to upload videos right now, so I can't show it here.


We had teacher conferences later that night, and his teachers said that several parents asked them who the little boy shouting to mommy was.



Dorothy really liked watching the kids during the show and even took a short break from snacking.

They have already started working on another play that will be performed in a couple of weeks, and he is very excited.  He has been telling me that they have been singing new songs at school, but they are not Stone Soup.  Today, during our walk home, I asked him if he could sing any of them for me and he said, "No."  A few seconds later he informed me that he, "Has a song in my head."  I asked him if he could sing the song in his head and he serenaded me with The Lion Sleeps Tonight.  He told me that he had sung that song at school, so I asked if that was one of the songs they were learning for the play.  "No.  I was just singing it at school to the other kids."