It’s Carnival time here in Trinidad and Tobago! It’s a time for us to have fun and express our creativity. On the Friday before Carnival my school hosts it’s own Carnival show consisting of a Calypso and Ol’ Mas competition and a another competition for the flag-waving posse of each class. The picture above shows the infant department with their Ol’ Mas portrayal.

First, I should introduce you to a few Carnival terms that I’ll be mentioning often. Ol’ mas is a dramatization of current affairs done in a comical way (without speech, you can only use props). Most of our portrayals had political themes since we just had our local elections in January. Soca is a form of calypso that is really upbeat and makes you want to party.

This year I was really inspired by one of the soca songs hitting our local airways. It is sung by Super Blue, a veteran calypsonian, the name of the song is Fanstastic Friday. We all dressed in blue as a way of paying tribute to this musical icon and our theme for our flag-waving posse was ‘Fanstastick Friday!’ We purposefully added the ‘k’ to ‘Fantastick’ so that we could wave fans and sticks along with our blue flags. You get extra points for creativity.

I was all dressed in blue for Fantastic Friday!

Some of my students getting ready for the Flag Waving posse

These are the extra stuff that we made for our ‘Fantastick Friday’ theme.

We placed first for the Calypso competition and third for the Ol’ Mas. The standard-five class placed first for the flag-waving posse – a well deserved win. They were the only other class to dress in blue but they also incorporated other elements from from Super Blue’s song like water and powder. We’ll beat them next year and defend our title as Calypso champs.

For now, we are enjoying the real Carnival (outside of the classroom) and school will resume on Ash Wednesday.