Aloha!

End of the Year Party! Hawaiian Luau style!
As I have mentioned before in past posts, I signed up to be PB's room parent (and room parent for another class as well...42 kids total) for his last year of elementary school.  Our last class party was yesterday and it was perfect.

I carved two tiki head watermelons as center pieces for each classroom's food table using pumpkin carving tools.

 I made this banner and arrangement to greet the kids as they came into their classes. Hmmm... those tiki guys look familiar....

 I hung grass skirt-ish buntings across the doorways.  I made the flowers and tropical leaves from the colored butcher paper on those huge rolls from the teacher workroom.  The grass skirt part is made from brown paper lunch bags (left over from this project).

 This is a partial view of one of the classrooms pre-food set up.  I put smaller tiki heads in the windows along with mini grass skirts and leaves in the corners.  For the tablecloths,  I used pieces of tiki and bamboo printed fabric that I had on hand.

 I placed a lei on every student's desk for the day of the party and asked for everyone to dress in their finest grass skirts and Hawaiian shirts...teachers included!

We had Hawaiian music playing in the background. I hadn't planned any games or activities because I figured the kids would rather chit chat with their friends.  About 30 minutes into the party though the chit chat was out of control and I had a couple of girls boycotting the "old people" Hawaiian music by loudly belting out their favorite contemporary skank rock. It was clear they needed some direction.  I grabbed a nearby wooden yardstick, contemplated applying some stick time to the antagonists but went instead with "Limbo Contest!" The other classroom went with the same idea.  We then had a limbo-off between the winners of each class.  It was a lot of fun.  We then watched a photo slide show Hubs compiled for me from photos I had taken of the kids throughout the year.  They loved it.
As they all watched the slideshow I looked around at all of them smiling and laughing, swaying to the music and I realized that it was all worth the hard work I had done through the year because PB was smiling the most.