It’s Book Week in Australia!

Since 1946, the Children’s Book Council of Australia has run a Book of the Year competition. Find more information here.

Couldn’t resist inserting this meme!

I don’t remember having Book Week activities when I was at school, but then again, in those days, primary schools did not have teacher librarians on staff. Libraries in schools were a bit of a ‘hit or miss’ situation, depending on parent organisations to provide books and a teacher to volunteer to run the library.

I started teaching in 1971 and I can remember how excited the staff were, when a teacher librarian was appointed in 1975...at last!! So from then on, I was involved in Book Week activities organised by a TL. Some schools had grand affairs; others had more modest celebrations for the week. 

Here’s a photo of DD2 ( on the right) dressed up as a book character for Book Week. Neither she nor I can remember who that character was...but it was in the early 90s.

Now as a teacher, my classes expected me to dress up as well...I didn’t need much urging as it was always lots of fun. Here I am as Mr Biffy ( a clown) from the book ‘Mr Biffy’s Battle’...probably 1999. 

This year my granddaughter Holly is dressing up as a book character for Book Week celebrations at her Daycare Centre and DD2 asked for my help. My daughter said the character would either be the witch in ‘Room on the Broom’ or Edwina the Emu...I thought the witch would be a better idea/easier and DD2 agreed 😆. 

I was tasked with making the skirt, cloak and the plait. DD2 bought the hat, broom and wand online.  Last Friday Holly helped me finish her costume 😉. 

Ta dah! 

So a bit more fabric from my largish stash has been used...and that’s always a bonus! Lol

Playing 'Dress-ups'...

I know that some of you have been waiting for 'the photos' from that 60s Night...and the wait is over! 😄

We 'tossed around' lots of ideas beforehand. DH thought he'd dress up as a Beatle or a Beatles's fan. He would need a wig. So off we went to the Reject Shop and selected a wig each. The plan was that I would wear the long wig and DH would wear the short, curly one. But...the short haired wig didn't fit DH...so we swapped. 

I joked that we could go as Sonny and Cher...with me drawing on a moustashe...lol! 

Minds got changed a few times, about what we would wear. During one of our forays into local op shops, I noticed some of those 'beauty cases' from the 1960s. They were so trendy/cool in the mid 60s and I 'lusted after' one. My godmother bought me one...a cream one, and I was in seventh heaven! Mine is long gone but we have the one that used to belong to DH's mother, in a cupboard. My MiL used to keep old family documents in her beauty case and DH became the keeper after she died. 

So we emptied the family documents out of the case and on the Saturday evening, I put my iPad and some old 60s memorabilia in it instead. 

But a wig and a beauty case don't up add to much of a costume do they? 😉 DD1 brought over a few items for me...some sunglasses, a crocheted scarf and a big pink floppy felt hat. Visiting a local op shop looking for something I could wear, I found this...

Looking at old photos of myself from the 1960s, I noticed that I had rather favoured skivvies back then.( close fitting roll collar jersey). In my teens, I had envied friends who had those stretch black pants( I think they were called ski pants) ...my mum wouldn't entertain the thought of buying me a pair. So instead of wearing jeans to the 60s night, I decided to wear some jeggings with a dark skivvy and that sheepskin vest. My earrings are actually from the 1960s. They're so big, I hardly ever wear them...but they were perfect for the night.

And here I am!

( I couldn't fit the big hat on over the wig!) 

And DH?

You probably won't believe this, but a lot of people at this event didn't recognise him...wink wink! Lol. So off we set for a night of fun...

And met some friends as we walked in...

The placemats were very novel!

We all lined up to get our photos taken in the old 'Kombi'...

DH and our friend Dave worked hard on the 3 Sixties Quizzes; one lot of questions were about songs, another set was on TV shows and the third was about 60s events. My goodness we all struggled with those questions! Lol

As I wrote in an earlier post, we may not have done well in the quizzes, but we won the scavenger hunt.

Just for a laugh, also in that beauty case I took along some items that I still have that date back to the 1960s...from my teens specifically. 

My diary from the year I was in Grade 12...

( if you're wondering what I wrote about in that little diary, it was boring. I'm ashamed to say the main topics of discussion were school, boys, sewing, boys, school 😆) 

My Cliff Richard scrapbook...

I started the scrapbook in about Grade 9 and had kept adding to it as I found pictures. I had a little laugh when I saw the last page of the scrapbook...

No there was never a Volume 2! Lol

PS. Some people thought that I had dressed up as Cher, but I had decided that if asked, I would say I was Cleo Laine! Lol

Friday Night with Friends...

This was the last FNwF for 2015. 

I spent the first part of the evening at a school Christmas concert where my niece's daughter Lucy was  excitedly performing...Lucy is in the orange...a 'fox in a box'...

My DD2 had helped with the makeup...

After the concert, DH and I headed home, had dinner, and then I started FNwF in earnest. I sewed hexagon flowers until I ran out of 'basted' hexagons...I've only partly stitched the flowers, but the shapes are all in place around the centres.

And I finished the night by glue basting some more, ready for stitching on Saturday morning. 

I'm really enjoying this round of the HexieDownUnder swap...maybe because I have less commitments for other things at the moment. 

Book Week!

In the last few weeks I've been hearing friends discussing Book Week which is an annual initiative of the Children's Book Council ofAustralia and the aim of this organisation is to promote  the enjoyment and engagement of children with Literature. At various levels in the Community, it is a week of activities promoting children's literature...most families become involved at the school, daycare, kindergarten  levels and it was this involvement that my friends were discussing...and in particular the costumes that have become part of the week's celebration. Apparently it can be a stressful time for mums, aunts, grandmas etc who have been put to work making a costume...one friend informed me that the standards and expectations of these costumes have grown exponentially from her  early memories of Book Week. 

Well in my occasional series of posts that look back at my time/career in the classroom, I am going back to Book Week 1999. 

I was team teaching with Nola on Year 1. We decided that we would visit a local Costume Hire store in our lunch break one day (yes a free lunch break; it did happen once upon a time!) and check out outfits. Hmmm, most of the costumes were in tiny sizes and we were starting to get a bit concerned about whether we would find anything suitable to wear as a character from a children's book....then Nola found the very loose witch costume. Our Year 1 class loved a book called 'Witch, Witch, Come to my Party?', so one costume had been found.

Then I found a loose nun's outfit, but the problem was, what children's book had a nun as a character?  Nola knew one! Miss Clavell in the Madeline books! So we both had costumes which we booked to collect the day before the dress up day at school. 

The photo was taken in the staffroom at morning tea...

And aren't I very pious there with my fruit for morning tea, ignoring the plates of cakes! Lol

Some background...one of the Year 1 girls would not come near Nola for the whole 2 sessions that we stayed in costume...she wouldn't believe that it was Nola under that makeup. That little girl is still in touch with me and there don't seem to be any long term ill  effects of being scared that day! Lol. 

At lunch time Nola and I walked out of the school grounds to the local shops just so Nola could buy some lunch...needless to say we did get tooted at a bit by cars on busy Kelvin Grove Rd. 

The wonders of the Internet...here is a reading of the Witch Witch book...I'd forgotten how much I liked this book as it really entranced the children!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UYXQj_bMDm8

The School Disco...looking back on my teaching career...

At a few of my postings, the Student Council would organise a Disco to celebrate the end the term. Invariably there would be a theme and one such disco at Kelvin Grove State School (now KG State College) had the theme, 'Celebrities'. I honestly can't remember how I decided on what celeb to be but I have photographic evidence that Maureen, the Year 4 teacher, and I went as 'The Two Fat Ladies', Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson. These two UK ladies had a cooking show where they cooked dishes full of fats and sugars. In the show they would travel around the UK on a motorbike and cook at various venues. 

They made more than one series...

They liked to use fresh local produce...

Hopefully that stuffed toy isn't going in the pot!!

Well Maureen and I weren't able to organise to arrive at school on a motorbike but we still had fun!

Here we are posing with our 'props' hastily gathered from our respective kitchens! Our very enterprising Parents and Citizens Association organised photos which were later sold to us to raise funds! 

Note that I am wearing bright nail polish and a large ring on my finger...just like Jennifer Paterson! An old pair of light coloured specs were painted black to look like Ms Paterson's glasses. 

Another lovely memory from my working life...

'Dress ups' at work...

A little while ago I wrote a post about how I dressed up as a clown (Mr Biffy from Richard Tulloch's picture book) for Book Week in 2000.

Well throughout my long career in the classroom, there were a number of dress up days. Not all have been recorded in photos but a few have.
Now the following photo will show just how long I was a teacher...here I am in my classroom with the Principal Headmaster talking to the class...

Now observant readers will notice that there are some things in this photo that just 'don't add up'! lol
Clothes reminiscent of those worn in the early 1900s  but desks with laminate tops and plastic tidybox drawers...???  This photo was actually taken on July 4, 1979, when this school celebrated its 75th anniversary. Since then, DH and I have been back for the 100th Anniversary as we were both pupils there a long time ago...but not foundation students though! lol

On that day in 1979, after a year of planning, the school celebrated from July 4 (a Wednesday that year), right through to the following Sunday. The staff and many of the students got dressed up in clothes reminiscent of 1904.
The photo below shows the staff who dressed up...

And the last photo shows the pupils at the school who dressed up. (not the whole school though)

The youngest of these students would be in their mid 40s now...so that dates me a bit! lol

A teacher at the school in 2004 told me that the staff in that year, used these old photos of mine to help them organise their costumes. I didn't think to take photos of the 2004 staff and DH and I didn't get dressed up that time. Just didn't occur to us! lol