Christmas concerts may not have been put on as usual this year due to COVID-19 but students and teachers still made a fantastic effort to go ahead and rehearse and dress the part for the parents to be able to watch the recorded version.
The annual Christmas Concerts have always, in the past, put everyone in the festive mood as they packed into the community centre to watch their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, nieces and nephews perform. Yes, this year COVID-19 turned everything upside down.
Ms. Brems’ Kindergarten class were all dressed up as monkeys and were all part of the Kipling Zoo.
Mrs. Kish’s Grade 1 students were part of the K-3 play as well donning costumes as zoo animals and singing We Wish You A Merry Christmas.
Mrs. Tholl’s Grade 1/2 class performed a dance routine to Jingle Bell Rock with an animal theme donning their ugly Christmas sweaters.
The Grade 3 class, with the help of Janna Bright and her intern Julia Breitkreuz, centred their play around the Kipling Zoo with students dressed up as everything from birds to rhinos, monkeys, penguins and hyenas in their Holiday Zoobilee. A holiday is here and Chad the zookeeper is sadly stuck at the zoo. The animals try to cheer him up so they come up with a plan to make him a Christmas present. The birds made him a feathered hat, and the cats made him a coat. The animals were so thankful that the zookeeper looked after them so well.
The Grade 4 students, with the help of their teacher Kyla White, performed a play about Santa betting all the toys in a wrestling match against Jake Frost (Jack Frost’s evil brother) because he isn't feeling himself. He loses and tries to get his toys back. He then steals them back and makes Christmas great again.
Every year Santa hosts a decorating competition between the different elf departments – construction, boxing and wrapping in Mr. Parley’s Grade 5 classroom. Wait, that’s not right. The competition is at the North Pole. The goal of the competition is to help boost elf morale before the stress of the Christmas Eve deadline. Each department feels that they need to win the competition and trophy. This is when things get out of control. Who gets the situation back under control? Mrs. Claus gets special operative elves to work together to decorate the tree. They learn that working together is the thing to do.
The Grade 6 students, with the help of their teacher Maria Kary, didn’t let COVID-19 stop them from writing their own plays and dressing the part. Weeks of practice still went into the writing and rehearsal even though they weren’t performing in front of a huge crowd. Three groups wrote their plays as follows:
Evil vs Good, a play about how some brothers of Santa try to get back at Santa for being picked for being old St. Nick. However, their plans don’t go all as planned, especially when Sherlock Holmes shows up on the scene.
Santa Gets COVID. You guessed it, Santa gets COVID, and everything starts to go wrong. Mrs. Claus and their daughter get all emotional, and the reindeer ‘disappear’ to protect themselves from COVID or get out of working, and the elves are left holding the bag to save Christmas. All they need is a miracle.
Hockey Christmas - Santa saves the day when one of the players gets hurt. Who knew that Santa could deliver presents all around the world in a night and play hockey.
Grades K, 1, 2 and 5 also rehearsed their plays and filmed them for the community to view later.Â