Eventually the day came last week. It was the school day and "graduation ceremony" at Podar Jumbo Kids, Vijaya Bank Layout branch. If you have not attended such an pre-schooler event, please do so when you get your next chance. It is more fun than you think it can be.
The meat of the event was a number of dance performances by kids of various classes. We handed over our kids to the teachers as soon as we entered the venue and waited for their little one to get dressed, come on stage and perform. A noticeable thing with kids of this age is that most of them have no idea what stage fear is. So they are not bothered whether they are dancing in the living room of their home or in front of hundreds of people in an auditorium. However, there are a few who start crying the moment they are on stage. Some of them recover and join the dance, while a few them continue to cry at the top of their voice all through the dance. Some kids saw their parents in the audience and started screaming "mommieeee" and running towards them unaware of the 6 foot fall at the end of the stage! A couple of kids did not seem to want to show their faces to the audience, so they turned away from the audience and danced throughout. Some of them were distracted half way through the dance and started doing various things like chatting with their co-dancers, giggling uncontrallably and so on. Some ran backstage while the dance was still going on and the teachers had a tough time catching them and bringing them back onto the stage! All this while the teachers stood at both sides of the stage and danced with the kids, trying to bring a semblance of co-ordination to the dance. The kids mostly chose to ignore their teachers and did not let much order creep into their dances. They can get away with this.. even receive wild applause only because they are kids... being watched by starry eyed parents. Photos from the event are here.
I must appreciate the efforts put in by the school for the event. The teachers had prepared for weeks. The venue, JSS Auditorium, was quite good. They had arranged for dresses themselves and done a great job at that too! They showed a lot of enthusiasm and commitment to make the event a success. The teachers had their own dance performance as a surprise package at the end of the event. One of the good things they did was announce right in the beginning that they were going to give a DVD of the event to every kid. This avoided the chaos in front of the stage with eager parents trying to capture their kid through their cameras. They even sent us off with food packets.
My daughter will stop going to this school in 2 weeks and I am going to miss this place. Their infrastrcture, while not great, is not bad either. However, they seem to have put together a nice bunch of teachers and support staff who all love kids. I would certainly recommend this place (Podar Jumbo Kids, Vijaya Bank Layout branch).
