Congratulations, you're 6

Yesterday I attended the kindy graduation ceremony. It started at 9:30am and lasted for over an hour. The kids had to go up one by one and receive their certificate from the principal and then walk to the back and hand the paper to their mum who rolled it up and put it straight into a tube they had all brought for that purpose. The mums were all crying, and soon afterwards teh kids were all crying too. One boy cried, no, he was hysterically wailing for the entire ceremony. Through all the speeches you could just hear this one kid hicupping and choking and carrying on like a 2 bob watch. It is pretty insane when you consider that in less than a month they will all be starting school just over the road with the exact same classmates! And what, exactly, have they achieved anyway? They just got older. Let's not waste 4 hours of my day because some kids got older.

Everyone was dressed all in black like it was a funeral or something, and had big flower arrangements pinned to them. I had to wear my suit even though all I did was sit there. After the ceremony was finished all the guests went into a big room and had coffee and cake - I was shuffled off to the staffroom where I sat alone in front of a cup of coffee I couldn't drink for 20 minutes. Finally they came and said that it was time for photos. We all lined up, the kids, the parents, the teachers, everyone in the one photo. They love a good group photo I tell you what! I then managedto escape back to school for an hour but had to go back at 12 for lunch. They had prepared bento boxes for all of us. For 2 hours I sat and listened to the parents banging on at each other about their kids. Finally they started wrapping things up and speeches were made, I had to say something, and they gave us flowers and a present which I discovered later was a photo album. It was such a fuss over nothing!

Well, if that was the kindy graduation, I hate to see what the year 6 graduation will be like next week!