Tuesday 28 June 2011

Kids, February 2034

Round 31: February 2034 (Summer)

Principal: Tatiana Lachance is 51
Teachers: Pamela Gray is 49 and Finn Romilly is 33
Students: Caitlin Romilly and Brendan Lachance are both 11, Annabel and Georgina Nott are both 10, Matthew and Simon Lane are both 9, Aurora and Bianca Moretti, Alice Jacobson and Sylvia Draper are all 8, Ruby Lane, Ramona Nihill and Gabriel Nott are all 7, Charlotte and Marcus Lane are both 5 and Everett and Grace Benton and Jacinta Nihill are all 4.

Narrated by Tatiana Lachance

I can stand up in front of a whole school full of children without the slightest of jitters but speaking in front of adults still makes me incredibly nervous.

Unfortunately, when we have an event like Grandparents' Day, a welcome from the principal is usually expected.

All I can do is just get through it as best I can without being too visibly nervous.

The day is about the kids and the grandparents more than me, anyway.

For the rest of the day, I go around greeting the grandparents personally but no more big speeches, thank God!

There are no real classes on Grandparents' Day but we teachers end up being run off our feet anyway, with people coming in and out of the classrooms all day.

It's wonderful but it's one of our busiest days of the year.

The children really relish the opportunity to show their grandparents what they do all day at school and the grandparents get a kick out of it too.

We meet the kids' parents all the time but it's nice for us teachers to meet the extended family as well.

Most of the grandparents are much older than me but we get the odd one around my age. I went to high school with Kirstin and her two grandchildren are in pre-school this year!

It's strange for her and David to come to events like this and be among the only non-grey heads in attendance!

David was a little quicker to warm to the idea than Kirstin but I think they're both coping now!

So the teachers are free to stay in their classrooms for the whole time, we normally choose a couple of students to take the grandparents on a tour of the school.

We tend to pick the more outgoing kids, so Annabel Nott was a natural choice.

Caitlin Romilly took a second group around. She's made for that kind of stuff.

Some other kids were probably a bit sore about it, given that she's a child of a staff member but we would have picked her even if she wasn't.

We had so many demonstrations planned that I started to wonder if we'd even fit them all in.

We did a little bit of rearranging but we managed to fit everything in.

The day ended with some musical performances - outside in the playground, seeing our music room is definitely not large enough for anything like that.

We have some really talented musicians at our school.

The pre-schoolers haven't yet started any formal music instruction but Pamela did teach them a little song and dance for the occasion.

It was just so funny and adorable. It made me miss the time when my own kids were that age.

As it is though, my "baby" Brendan isn't much of a baby any more and this is his last Grandparents' Day! I can't believe he'll be off to high school next year but I guess I better get used to the idea!

Spam:
I just had too much fun making the kids smustle.

And I also love taking pics of Caitlin doing anything!

Notes:
  • I felt like doing something a little different for the school update this round, so Grandparents' Day it was! This is something we do at our school once a year. The kids love it, the grandparents love it and the teachers (mostly) love it too. It's definitely the kind of thing that can be bit of a pain, as fun as it is!
  • Poor Aurora and Bianca were totally left out of the pictures, I just realised! I had to set this up by bringing little groups onto the lot, bit by bit, so it was much easier to forget some kids. I think everybody else made at least a cameo.

27 comments:

  1. I loved Grandparents Day at your school, I need to spice up my primary school updates as well. I adore Finn's top, so very nice, do you remember where you got it from? It makes him look very yummy, something about his forearms...dreamy :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a cute idea! We never had grandparents day at my school. My grammy would come to some of the PTA meetings sometimes when my mom could get off work.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha, what a cute idea to have the grandparents come visit the school. It looks like it was a lot of fun to play through. I loved seeing the kids do their little performances at the end!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Apple Valley, I'd love to see Grandparents' Day in AV, if you want to do one too! I'm glad you liked it.

    I actually Frankensteined Finn's shirt together myself. I had that vest on the child version of that mesh but the adult textures were a bit outlandish. Just a copy and paste job, really!

    Thanks for reading!

    Riverdale, glad you enjoyed it! My grandparents always lived too far from the school to come to any events, so I was sort of living vicariously through my Sims, lol!

    Thanks for reading!

    Lunar, it was a lot of fun but I didn't exactly play through it! I had such small groups on the lot at different times, so it wasn't much like a regular school update. The performances were my favourite part to do though. :)

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a fun update! They don't do that kind of stuff here (but now I wish they did) so I never would've thought about it. That is such a nice thing to let the grandparents see the kids' school.

    Caitlin seems to be in her own element taking the grandparents around the school. She seems to enjoy it a lot.

    The pre-schoolers' dance performance is beyond adorable :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Awesome idea! I don't think I had anything like that past kindergarten.

    Haha, the 2 first outtake pictures remind me of Thriller. I never make my sims smustle but it always looks so fun on other simmers' blogs.

    Oh my god, I totally didn't notice Caitlin is about to become a teen! It feels so weird!

    I'm sure Aurora and Bianca enjoyed their day off of school :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. How cute! I still don't have very many grandparents since LB is so new, but this is a great thing to keep in mind for later! I can't wait to see a teen Caitlin, I think she's going to be extremely fun to watch!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sari, oh, really? Grandparents' Day is pretty common here and has been since I was primary-aged. Kids always love it (probably mostly because they don't have to do real work that day!)

    Caitlin is definitely a people-person, I think! I'm already imagining what kind of job she might have when she's older that would take advantage of that. ;)

    Thanks for reading!

    Flit, part of the Smustle is actually the Thriller dance. I think the animations are even labelled that way in game! You should try it out, it's fun!

    I know, it feels like Caitlin was born just yesterday and now she's 11!

    Aurora and Bianca are both quite shy, so although they didn't exactly get a day off school (story-wise!), they probably enjoyed the fact that they didn't have to do any performances or tours. ;)

    Thanks for reading!

    Mizzgin03, definitely! I can imagine some of the future grandparents of LQB would love watching their grandkids at school. :)

    I'm really excited to see Caitlin as a teen. She's been such a fun kid so far.

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  9. You did a great job of the shirt. You should definately offer it for download *hint hint*

    ReplyDelete
  10. Apple Valley, I just went to check where I got the original textures for the vest and it looks like I don't need to share them anyway. They were conversions from adult outfits in the first place! They were originally made by Amaryll for the GOS Advent Calendar 2010.

    The pictures are missing now but there's a link to download some vests and I can only assume those would be the ones you're looking for!

    http://www.digitalperversion.net/gardenofshadows/index.php?topic=20736.msg529981#msg529981

    ReplyDelete
  11. Such a fun update Carla! I love it! You've inspired me yet again :)
    Just like Mizzgin03 I don't have many grandparents at the moment but, I'll keep it in mind :)

    And wow about Cailin being a teen next round! I can't believe it! But I couldn't believe it with Declan either ...

    ReplyDelete
  12. Awww, how cute is that!! A grand-parents day! I've never seen that in my school (but OK, it was an eternity ago). I would have loved this, having being raised by my grand-parents. So, I definitively found this update soooo adorable and moving. I loved, LOVED the kids smustle! That's the cutest thing ever! *swoon*

    ReplyDelete
  13. Tanja, ooh, a lot of Simsville residents are getting to the point where they'd get to go to things like this though! I can't wait to see if you take this idea and run with it. :)

    I've been preparing myself for Declan and Caitlin to become teens for a while now but it's still a shock! It's coming up fast now for Caitlin!

    Thanks for reading!

    Sandy, LOL, primary school was a good while ago for me too but seeing I work at one, it's a little fresher in my mind than it might be otherwise! Glad you liked it! I'll definitely do something like this again sometime. :)

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks for the link, I have those vests in my game, but not the one with the tie. There's a child version?!?! Wow, I'm tempted to do downloading now.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yes, the kids' versions are by Trapping, if I remember correctly. They are at her LJ.

    ReplyDelete
  16. The first picture of the little ones doing the dance just made me laugh, they look so adorably silly!
    This all must have been one hell of the logistics to set up, but it looks so much fun and real. Really sweet update.

    ReplyDelete
  17. What an interesting idea! I've never had a Grandparents Day, but it really sounds like fun.

    The pictures of the kids smustling and Caitlin are adorable!

    Great update!:)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Speechless, that's my favourite picture of the dancing too! I've never noticed Sims doing that move in the smustle before but I was using Squinge's animation hack, so I was able to isolate specific moves.

    It did take a long time to set up but I think it was worth it. It turned out pretty cute. ;)

    Thanks for reading!

    coolkat2, it's hard to extract much drama out of the primary kids, so I'm trying to do some different things with them every now and then.

    I had to put some Caitlin spam in at the end - it's one of the last times we'll see her as a child!

    Thanks for reading!

    coolkat2,

    ReplyDelete
  19. Love the Grandparents idea!! How fun! And the smustle was really awesome, love that!! I don't know if they do grandparents day here, they never did when I was a kid anyway, but I would have loved that if they did, my Grandpa was the one who took me to/from school back in grade school.

    I can completely understand Tatiana being nervous in front of all the adults. I've done some teaching casually, like Sunday Schools, day cares, etc. And yes, kids alone is awesome, but adults in the audience and it's nervewracking.

    The girls with the tours is just too sweet! Ahh, this whole update was great. I wanna do a parents night sometime, but I've had so many issues with crashing my school lot I never got to, but now I wanna do grandparents instead!

    I'm really looking forward to Caitlyn turning teen. I want to see what she looks like!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Oh my goodness! I love the idea of Grandparents' Day! I like that you had them go on tours and the little music and singing and dancing performance at the end of the day was super cute! I remember doing things like that in elementary school, but not for Grandparents' Day (I don't think we had Grandparents' Day in my school). Charlie Jr., I mean Everett, was too cute! I loved his big smile. And wow! My sweetie pie Brendan is off to high school next year?! *tear* I can't wait to see what he gets into but I will miss his child stage (I've been missing him as a toddler).

    Loved the update and loved the extra spam at the end, too. And I have a little tear for Caitlin going off to high school, too. She's going to be fun for you to play and for us to watch. I'll have to save Grandparents' Day in my notes for the very distant future. At the rate I play, Sims 4 will be out with at least 1 EP and SP before I get enough grandparents to do something like this ;).

    ReplyDelete
  21. Maisie, I figure a lot of these kids would have loved Grandparents' Day as well, because there are some very close grandparent/grandchild relationships at this school. Super-cute!

    LOL, well, I didn't pull that nerves thing out of nowhere, you know! That's me all over. I can stand in front of a group of 30 kids and be totally confident but one adult walks into the room and I get all flustered! Tatiana is very shy, so I think she'd be the same way.

    You should definitely still do the parents' night and do a Grandparents' Day as well! Have you tried bringing your Sims onto the lot in small groups? That worked pretty well for this update.

    I can't wait to show you guys Caitlin as a teen. I've already seen her, because I aged her up when she was a toddler just to check. ;) I really like how she turns out.

    Thanks for reading!

    Danielle, yeah, all this stuff was directly from my own experience as a teacher. I can't remember too well what our Grandparents' Day was like in primary school, except that we had one and my grandparents couldn't come!

    You know, I totally type "Charlie" every time I write about Everett. They are just so alike!

    And yes, Brendan and Caitlin both off to high school next year! I can hardly believe it but I'm quite excited about it as well. I bet Brendan will have the girls lined up around the block. He's so shy though and I wonder how he'd deal with that!

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  22. I understand why you love taking pictures of Caitlin. She is very photogenic.

    The Grandparents Day seems cool. We never had anything like that when I was going to school, but it looks like it would be really fun.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Fini, Caitlin is a very expressive little girl. She's so much fun to play and take pics of.

    Glad you liked the Grandparents' Day. As I said above, I need to do some different things to mix it up a bit in the school updates - the primary ones get a bit samey if I don't!

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  24. I'm finally getting around to commenting everything so forgive my lateness!

    What a great idea, I know my grandparents would have loved that when me and my brother were that age. I think we'd have enjoyed showing off equally as much though.

    I loved the spam at the end I've never seen kids smustling before, it looks adorable. Finally, once again your school is beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Driftwood Valley, heh, I think most kids enjoy showing off what they've learnt, even the shy ones. When we do Grandparents' Day at school, you can often see the quiet kids coming out of their shells.

    LOL, I can't stop my kids from smustling whenever there's a stereo on. But I had never lined them up like that before. Thanks for the compliments on the school!

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  26. Aww, this was adorable! What a lovely idea.

    It would be strange to see grandparents her age there--it would probably make me feel kinda old!

    I love the demonstrations! The picture with the kids doing cartwheels is so cute. :)

    ReplyDelete
  27. Rachel, I think seeing people your age who are "ahead" of you in some way is always a bit sobering! I think Tatiana is ready for some grandbabies though - much more so than Kirstin was, anyway!

    The cartwheels picture was such a pain, so I'm glad you like it. It did turn out cute at least, for all my efforts!

    Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete