Grade 6 Graduation

Friday night was grade 6 graduation. We are now, officially, the parents
of a middle schooler. (I know many of you middle school begins with
grade 6 or even grade 5, but here middle school is grades 7 and 8).
Our school here is technically one school divided into two campuses--the
primary campus (preschool-grade 6) and the secondary campus (grades
7-12). As you can imagine, moving from the primary campus to the
secondary campus is a big deal for 11-13 year-olds.
The tradition here is to have a graduation ceremony for the grade 6
kids. This ceremony is very similar to what you might see in the US. We
have a song sung by the primary school choir (grades 4-6), a sixth grade
band performance, The kids get a graduation certificate, and lots of
pictures are taken.

Sydney, being the multi-talented kid that she is sang in the choir, played and in the band, and was among the graduates. We were very proud of her.

However, there are some really special parts of this graduation ceremony
that I love. These things remind me how blessed we are to have our kids
in a school where they are both academically and spiritually
challenged. One such tradition is that all of the kid's previous
teachers are invited to write up a special greeting to the class...
included in these greetings are special memories about the group of kids
and things that stood out to the teacher about this particular class.
Another tradition is that the kids get a chance to share memories from
their primary school years. Sometimes these are fun, silly memories.
Other times, they are more thoughtful memories of friends they've had to
say goodbye to along the way.
My absolute favorite grade 6 graduation tradition, though, is the
awarding of character awards to each student. In preparation for the
night, the teachers meet together to choose a character award for each
student. These character awards are qualities that are consistently
shown by that student. They are qualities that reflect God's work in the
life of that particular student. The teacher stands up, announces the
character trait, describes what it looks like in action, gives some
scripture verses that address this character trait and then announces
the name of the student who has been given this character award. Some
examples of character awards are loyalty, discernment, prayerfulness,
conscientiousness, and creativity. I had to laugh a bit when Sydney was
awarded her character award. I knew it was her as soon as her teacher
opened her mouth and announced what character award she was about to
give.... any guesses for a girl who is, in many ways, a lot like her
mother?
Because we often have to create our own fun here, the parents planned
some after grad events for the graduates. I was in charge of organizing
all of these events, but it really was a group effort. It was a full
night for the kids and their families.
Once the grad ceremony finished, we headed over to the primary school
where we had a reception for the grads and their families-- you know,
finger foods, punch, chatting, and about 200 cupcakes in a variety of
flavors (the cupcakes were my idea and they turned out to be a bit hit!).
Once everyone had their fill, we did some Australian Bush Dancing.
(Think Square dancing, but more fun!).

Next, the grads said goodbye their parents and began an epic game of capture the flag all around the primary school grounds (by this time it was 10:30 pm and POURING rain). As you can imagine, they had a BLAST.

Finally we wrapped up the night with a quick bonfire (beacuse of the rain) and finally rides home at around 11:45 pm

What a fun but exhausting night!

And the character award of CREATIVITY goes to Sydney Owens! (just in case you didn't already guess it!)

All dressed up and ready to graduate!

The "cupcake" table.  We made about 200 cupcakes in 6 different varieties.  They were a lot of fun to make and a big hit at the reception!