The experience of having a fun morning with family and friends was perhaps obvious for the children of GIIS Balestier in October, 2008, but this day offered something far more significant – a bonding between the parents and the school.

Much before the scheduled time of 10a.m, parents walked in being guided by their children. The attractive and inviting banners, announcing the Family carnival saw children delighted and all eager to participate in the activities laid out for them.

As the families walked in, they were introduced to the Educational stall, wherein children were shown the difference between magic and the influence of science.

We then had the Heena and Tattoo stalls, which hit the top position on the popularity list.

The idea of being photographed as an astronaut was irresistible and we had many flock to purchase the diyas on sale. Games were an obvious attraction. The carnival provided games such as Scoop the ball, Feed the hungry Lion, Hit the Bulls Eye, Dot the spot and Ring the objects. We also had a game put up by our PSG, Tikam Tikam that encouraged children, as most of them were sure winners there.

The carnival witnessed grownups and children making a beeline for the mouthwatering pastas, sandwiches, cakes, ice creams and chaats. The salad counter and the rice and chana stalls were praised very much. There were two competitions held in the campus -The Poster competition that saw a participation of about 189 students and the Family Talent show.

The poster competition was judged by Ms Sheela Karia, Vice-Principal, Primary, Queenstown campus, Ms Karuna Sharma and Ms Kalpana Kudva of the Balestier Campus. The family talent show was judged by Mrs Visalakshi, a talented parent and Ms Neela from Balestier. The winners for the poster making competition were as follows: In the first, second and third positions respectively

Class-i- Ayushi Gianchandani-1B, Shibani Ganeshan-1D, Nayan Lath-1C.
Class-ii-Pranati Rajagopal-2A, Kavipriya palanivel Kovai-2F, Chinmay Jolhe-2A
Class-iii-ADHYAN GARG-3D, Anisha Amarasekera-3E, ANITA MICHAEL-3E

The winners of the Family talent competition were:
The families of JaiAnand, Ananya Kumaresan and Chirag Deepak, in the first second and third position respectively.

It was surely not an easy task to select the winners and the judges really had a tough task on hand. Ms.Melissa Maria ,Vice Principal Balestier, presented the mementos to our esteemed judges, who spend their most valuable time with us.

Mr. Winston Gomez, Principal Balestier, addressed the parent gathering, while Mr. Kaustubh Bodhankar,Country Director of the Singapore GIIS schools and Mr. Maneesh Tripati, CEO ,GIF graced the occasion and gave away prizes to the winners.

The event proved to be a grand success and bore the fruit of the hard labour put in by all the teachers and staff of the school.Reported by Sujatha Krishnan.