Last Friday, I took Emma to Simi Valley to compete in the district speech meet, since she won in her category in her local school one. This is her and her friends from school who were also there competing in other categories.
She did very well. I thought some of the other kids were way too over-exaggerated in their presentations, but apparently the judges like that sort of thing, because those were the ones that received the highest scores. All the kids were seated up front with the parents and judges at the back of the room, and each kid in turn stood up at the front facing the rest of the room to give their speeches.
One kind of funny but eventually uncomfortable part was one of the girls that was sitting in the back row of students would turn around and make faces to her parent after some other kid would do something that she didn’t think measured up to her standards. At first her mom laughed, but then it got pretty embarrassing as she realized that the parents of the kids she was mocking were also sitting right there watching her do so.
Afterwards we went by the T.O. mall for lunch and some mother’s day shopping, which Emma enjoyed. She got the day off of school because of it, but she was very concerned at first and we had to assure her that, since it was a school activity, this would not count against her perfect attendance record.