State Fair

Today was the long-awaited Third Grade State Fair!  Madeleine has only been anticipating this event since the very day the kids got their state assignments.  Not only did each child present a diorama and paragraph about the state he or she studied, but the entire third grade put on a presentation of songs and facts about the United States.  Among these songs was "Fifty Nifty," and I definitely could have sung along with the kids after hearing it about five thousand times a day at home.  Madeleine enjoyed testing the limits of my tolerance by doing things like singing the song on a repeated loop for the entire morning before heading off to school, or asking me to time her to see how fast she could sing the entire thing.  Today she got it down to 30 seconds, which made the 2+ minutes of performance seem downright lesiurely:

Madeleine also got her moment of fame reading a fact about her state, Virginia.  While every other kid adjusted the microphone to his or her height, Madeleine opted to just tower over the mouthpiece with her whole body bent down:




It's just too bad the kids didn't get to perform this patriotic hit as well.


The kids were instructed to wear red, white and blue, and Madeleine made sure that everything from her hair to her nails embodied the national colors:

The second part of the State Fair took place in the cafeteria, wherein all the children sat with their dioramas of an important landmark in their state.  Madeleine's diorama was of Bacon's  Castle in Surry, VA:

Madeleine even decorated the back of her diorama box:

She did a great job entertaining the passers-by with facts about Bacon's Castle, reading tid-bits from the paragraph she had written about it.  She even ad libbed a bit.

MADELEINE: (to passers-by who stopped to admire her diorama) Would you like to hear why it's called Bacon's Castle?
PASSERBY: Sure.
MADELEINE: Because in World War II, Nathaniel Bacon used this building as a fort to hide out in.

Close.  Off by a few centuries.

From Wikipedia: "The house became known as "Bacon's Castle" because it was occupied as a fort or "castle" by the followers of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. However, contrary to popular folklore, Bacon never lived at Bacon's Castle, nor is he even known to have visited it."


I am so glad I had the day off from work so that I could attend the State Fair!  Bravo, Madeleine!  And I expect to have "Fifty Nifty" in my head for at least the next few days....