Inaugural Australia Day Party

Yesterday Daniel and I celebrated Australia Day at school with the kids. We held a party in the gym and gave an open invitation to the entire school to come along and participate. We've been teaching the kids some Aussie songs and doing Australian-themed crafts with them for a few weeks now, so it was a good opportunity for the kids to show off what they had learned and produced. But really, the main objective of the party was for the kids to have some fun and make a lot of noise!

And I must admit that they did pretty well on both counts. We started things off with some songs, including Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, some weird Don Spencer song about Australian animals that we significantly amended and the good ol' Aussie sporting chant Aussie-Aussie-Aussie-Oi-Oi-Oi. The kids absolutely loved this, especially as we kept urging them to sing the chant louder and louder. At one stage I thought I felt the walls of the gym vibrating!

After the songs, we divided the 70 or so kids into teams and got them to move to various stations around the room where four different activities were set up. Each team had about 10 minutes to complete the activity as many times as possible, scoring one point for every success.

Prior to blowing the whistle to begin the first activity, we really had no idea how well our idea was going to work. In our experience, whenever large groups of kids are together at school, the teachers are doing everything they possibly can to keep them quiet. But we were actively encouraging them to be as noisy as possible!

Daniel was in charge of the first activity - Kangaroo Jumping. Basically this involved getting the kids to strap on a foam 'kangaroo' tail, step into a garbage bag and bounce across the gym floor. Boy, were they fast!

The second activity was manned by our colleague Ili. We called it Australian Basketball and it was inspired by the great Aussie pastime of thong throwing. We gave the kids a pair of thongs and they had to fling them up into the air and get them to pass through the basketball hoop.

Of all the activities, I think this was the one that our colleagues thought was a bit odd. But the kids didn't seem to think it was especially weird and they appeared to get a real kick out of being allowed to toss the thongs around.

While we kept a broom on standby in case the thongs got stuck in the basketball net, Ili informed us that they never did. This was quite ironic as when Daniel and I practised this activity ourselves before the party, the thong got stuck in the netting almost every time!

The third activity - Aussie Rules Football - was manned by our colleague Gabriel, the school PE teacher. 

Daniel and I had spent a few days before the party honing our ball bouncing skills, so Daniel made this activity look really easy when he gave the initial demonstration. But for the kids, who had never encountered anything other than a round ball before, getting the Aussie footy to bounce and come back to them was a real challenge. 

Gabriel made the kids bounce the football a total of six times (three times up the court and three times back), then handball it to the next person in line. Needless to say, the kids spent most of their time chasing the ball. It's mean of me to say this, but I was actually pretty pleased that they found it tricky. I saw it as revenge for all the times that the kids have made me look silly when we've played soccer. SUFFER!

I was in charge of the final activity - Where is Australia? - which was a hybrid version of pin the tail on the donkey.

In this activity, the kids were shown a map of the world without Australia on it. I then demonstrated where Australia was supposed to be and got the kids to write their names on a small Australian-shaped piece of paper. Then the kids lined up, I wrapped a scarf around their head to cover their eyes, spun them around a few times and let them go. They stumbled towards the map and tried to place their paper where Australia was supposed to be.

Anyone who managed to get in the vaguely correct area was awarded a point.

After the final scores had been tallied and prizes awarded, we finished the party with one final activity - The Mintie Wrapper Challenge.

I remember this game from my childhood, so I was quite excited to show it to the kids. Basically, the kids had to unwrap a mintie, eat it and then attempt to tear their wrapper to make the longest possible shape. The best way to do this is to make a spiral, but the real challenge is to make the edges as thin as possible without breaking the whole thing into lots of small pieces

The entire party went for about 90 minutes and Daniel and I were absolutely exhausted by the end of it. Happily, most of the students looked pretty exhausted too, so I think we did a good job!

Big thanks to everyone who posted us lots of Aussie-themed treats in the lead up to the party....although Daniel wasn't too thrilled about the vegemite.

- Amanda