Arts and Crafts

Only three more days of the deaf school kindergarten, three more days of the Mother's Room and forced arts and crafts and the competitive nature of the mothers when doing said arts and crafts. Not being, in general, an artsy craftsy type, and also not being a conformist, I have resented spending hours making obligatory birthday cards for the monthly birthday party, and also the hours spent on the name tags for the annual sleepover. (Why don't the kids make these things? It's their school activity!) If you look closely, you can see that we had to chain-stitch the names of the teams (in this case, kujira, or whale, and kabutomushi, a.k.a. stag beetle. We spent more time making the name tags than the kids spent wearing them.

For the past couple of weeks, the mothers have been making shikkishi for the teachers. These are the Japanese equivalent of yearbook pages, and at most schools the mothers just dash off a little note in a corner and sign it. At the deaf school, each mother-and-child had to write joint messages on construction paper cut-outs to all the teachers. That was the easy part. Then, each mother is making a very elaborate shikkishi for her kid's homeroom teacher. One mother is making some sort of flower, a hydrangrea, maybe, and cutting out dozens of millimeter-sized flower petals, which she then affixes with a toothpick and a little bit of glue. The other mothers have been oohing and ahhing over her creation. They totally snubbed mine, which hurt my feelings, but then again, why do I care so much? I've been brainwashed! I have to get out of there. Three more days...