Phew!

My presentation went well yesterday. What makes a presentation good, I think, is having plenty of discussion from the group, and this group of teachers I'm so fortunate to work with has loads of great ideas to share. Of course I had far more information to share than we had time for. I'd rather have that scenario than the one I had for L's 6th birthday party a couple of months ago -- 90 minutes to fill and all of the activities took a quarter of the time that I had planned on. Six-year-olds go through things so fast! L had wanted an Easter egg hunt for part of his birthday party (go figure, with a birthday that's on Valentine's!), so I scoured the dollar store for plastic egg goodies -- mostly cheap candy, spent time aided by my other children filling the eggs, and then E offered to hide the eggs for me on the day of the party. Well, a dozen exuberant kindergarteners finished off the egg hunt in about 2.5 minutes. I'm not sure how many rounds of octopus tag and freeze dance we played to fill the rest of the time...learn from me: a) 60 minutes MAX is plenty of time for a birthday party; b) include plenty of running around activities; and c) be sure to have some back-up (help, activities)!