Princess Amiya

The second grade at Amiya's school is a year of much excitement - but it would seem that nothing can top the Fairy Tale Bowl and the Fairy Tale Stroll.

Second graders spend a month studying the genre of the fairy tale. I guess I never realized that it is a genre unto itself, but it seems that it is and that it must be studied. So it is.

The children spent their time reading different tales, analyzing them, charting them, becoming one with them. And then they took a quiz - and the four students who got the best scores in the shortest amount of time get to be on the team that represents that class against other classes in the annual Fairy Tale Bowl. (ie. Jeapordy for Fairy Tales)

Amiya got hers in first and scored 100%, so she not only got to be on the team, but she got to be the captain. The exciting thing is that the captain is the person who, after consulting with teammates, gets to answer the questions. Luckily for this team, Amiya has had a great deal of practice talking. It was a good fit.


Here's the team prior to the game. Looking good, looking strong. They probably all carbo-loaded on pancakes and chocolate milk for breakfast. Mmmmmm.

See that buzzer? Oh yeah, this was serious stuff. And the buzzer proved to be a serious problem. This team was a little quick to the buzzer - and it ended up costing them a lot of points.


Not that they cared! They still tied for second place and were very happy about it - as evidenced by Amiya's smile with her medal.

The next day was no less exciting. The children were all supposed to pick a character from a fairy tale and wear a costume representing that character to the Fairy Tale Stroll. The stroll itself was a little confusing for us parents, but once we got it figured out, all was well. The kids "strolled" from class to class to do projects based on a specific fairy tale.

The neat part about this day, for me at least, was that Amiya was adamant, absolutely adamant, that she was going to be a character from a fairy tale that was Indian or at least not blonde-haired. I wanted her to be The Paper Bag Princess because that is the most awesome princess ever, but it was not to be. She scoured her books and her memory for any recollection of a princess that was closer to her heritage. She finally settled on Maha, from The Golden Sandal. The Golden Sandal is a Middle Eastern version of Cinderella and Maha (when dressed for the party) wears a beautiful white gown with a gold sash and golden slippers. So, off we went to JoAnn's for a pattern, fabric and spray paint. And this is what we came up with:

I think she's showing a bit much around the ankles to be a true Maha, but she looked pretty cute!

And a bit closer on the hands because we mehndi'd her right up - Maha went to a mehndi party in the book, although it's not clear if she was actually tatted up. But in Amiya's little mind any excuse to mehndi is a good excuse!


And that's all we've got for the celebration of fairy tales. I hope that our little Princess Amiya will always feel so strong and so proud of her roots and self-confident enough to do her own thing - even if it means being the only girl in her class without pink sparkly wings and a glittery wand.