School hosts last Christmas show
The Leader-Post followed Christmas play rehearsals at two schools in the lead-up to the festive season. Today we head to Wascana Community School, in North Central. Emma Cote wrestles with the black elastic that will hold her red, flashing Rudolph nose in place.
She blinks, her eyes a little smooshed thanks to the elastic, then turns to her classmates and grins.
The kindergarten student at Wascana Community School is ready to start rehearsals for the Christmas play.
After a practice rendition of Little Snowflake, arts education teacher Joan McDonald leads the class into the gymnasium and up onto the risers for the first time.
The space has already been decorated for the occasion; blue and white paper snowflakes of all sizes, made by the students, are plastered to the wall above the small stage.
With the school set to close in the summer, merging with Herchmer into the new Seven Stones School, it will be the final Christmas concert held in the small, wooden-floored Wascana gym.
Sarah Roe, the school’s other arts ed teacher, says holding the concert is an important highlight for the community and is expected each year.
Parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents will all show up, proud to see their little ones perform on stage.
“Even talking to my own parents, they were saying that they loved to see our Christmas concert every year when we were kids,” Roe says.
“It’s a tradition and, I think in that way, it’s important.” But much like at St. Peter School, which the LeaderPost visited in Monday’s paper, pulling together a Christmas concert at Wascana is no easy task.
“It takes a lot of hours,” Roe says.
Writing music, rehearsals, penning the MC script, figuring out the technical aspects — it all adds up to “hours and hours” of extra work.
“Nobody knows all of the little details that go into a concert,” Roe says.
Inside the Grade 1/2 classroom, she goes through a rehearsal of Snowman on the Lawn, sung to the tune of Farmer in the Dell.
The students seem to be enjoying themselves, but are buzzing so much about the concert that it takes them a while to get into the groove.
Then there are the older students, who need to recognize a “cool factor” before they take part.
That means something like the video of All I Want For Christmas, created by Wascana’s Grade 7 and 8 students.
“It was something on their interest level,” Roe explains.
It doesn’t work every time, though.
Take the two older students who were to sing a duet of Holy Night in English and Cree. After they had an argument, it had to be nixed from the program.
And that is what leads to Roe’s favourite part of the show, she admits with a laugh — when it “all actually comes together.”
“Right now, it’s pretty frazzled,” she says.
Admittedly, not everything the students do for the Wascana Christmas concert links back to the curriculum.
But for the kindergarten students, many of whom will be on stage for the first time, that’s largely irrelevant.
Back in the gymnasium, they get a feel for what it will be like to stand up there in front of the crowd.
Dawson Moffatt stretches with a look of wonder on his face.
“I’m the tallest man in the world,” he says, his reindeer nose flashing.
Well would you look at that. It’s a Christmas miracle.