Kye had a big month in February! He had his very first research project for school. Back in the fall he did an oral presentation about a community helper (you can see his cute fireman outfit we made here!). He also did a report on Walt Disney. This time he had to do a report, poster board, and oral presentation about a country. It was a pretty big deal!
The country Kye was assigned was Kenya. I struggled with this project because I am big about my kids being independent and doing things themselves. But…he’s in kindergarten. He couldn’t possibly research about Kenya? He hasn’t even ever been allowed to touch my computer ha! He sat with me and I looked up all the information we were supposed to find. He chose each picture that I printed out and he decided how to decorate his board, what to include in his oral presentation, and he glued everything down as well as colored all the letters we used.
This was my first experience using a board for a presentation. I was thankful to see the others that the class did so I got some ideas for how we will do it next time! My main concern was making sure he had ALL the information he was supposed to include. There weren’t points for making the board look cute, his grade was based on including certain information, certain photos, and proof that he did the work. He got some points off on his Walt Disney project and it was a good learning experience for me to know what to better include this time around. With the Walt one I had him decide every fact he wanted to include, and they just weren’t involved enough so we did more Kenay facts! I was less worried about the board and more concerned about the oral presentation part. We had several weeks to work on the project and once we had it done we practiced it together once a day. When the day came for him to present he told me he didn’t even want to practice and that he had it down!
He presented to his class and I heard he did a great job 🙂 I appreciate his teacher from a couple years ago snapping this picture for me!
The day after they presented for their class they had a big celebration where parents were invited to attend! We brought food representing our country, they dressed in costumes from their native land, and each child presented their board and oral presentation. It was all super cute!
They each had a little suitcase and passports from their travels around the world 🙂
Kenya’s main export is corn and tea so we did a South Ga spin on Kenyan food and brought cornbread and sweet tea 🙂
Here is how the native Kenyans dress…
Here is my little Kenyan 🙂
We already had a red bed sheet so Zach helped me make it into a toga type thing for him to wear. I did buy the red flip flops but he will get plenty of wear out of them this summer! He also wore shorts under his outfit and found the necklace last minute and it went great with his look! I did buy the Kenya flag from Amazon too!
I was BLOWN AWAY by how wonderful Kye did! He wasn’t nervous at all and spoke so clearly and loudly and just really did a wonderful job. He spoke in front of his whole class, all their parents, his teacher, and the school director. It was obvious he knew the information and I was very proud!
When he put together his presentation he wanted to ask the crowd a question to start it off and I was the only one who responded to it but it was still cute 😉 I video taped the whole thing and you can see it here! It was a good bit of information to remember, I feel like we are both Kenya experts now!
G-Mama was able to come to see the presentation with me 🙂 Mema was so sweet to keep Tess and Britt had school that day. Zach was out of town at a mandatory meeting but we showed him the video when he got home!
Such a cute class!
I really LOVED the Italy board. Not only because I love Italy but because it was super cute. I told the little girl and her mom that I was going to take a picture of it so I could remember for next time around haha!
We enjoyed tasting foods from all over the world and visiting with friends!
Later in February we had Muffins with Mom Day in Kye’s class. He was SO excited to get to have muffins with me (to be honest…I think he was more excited for the muffins ha!). It fell on the same morning as Tess’s 6 month well visit so it was a tad crazy that day!
His teacher had cute ladybug decorations
Kye made me a sweet card and there were seeds for some flowers and a sweet poem about motherhood in relation to the seeds we plant. It was precious! They also went around the table and each said something they love about their moms. I could tell Kye had a lot on his heart but he just went with what every other child said and said he loves that I cook for him 😉
Photo booth fun!
Kye’s mustache was on point haha! We were both cracking up about it!
As a craft we made a tote bag together. I have used it several times as an insert in the diaper bag and it makes Kye so proud when he sees me using it 😉 He was so cute and designed the whole thing with a picture of us together on it. I told him to put the date on it so we can always remember when he made it and he did NOT like that idea. He said we would get confused and see the date and think it was that current date. So instead he wrote “I made this on the 10th of Feb 2015” haha
It was nice to relax and just enjoy Kye on his own. I love one-on-one time with my children and take it whenever I can get it! I do prefer dates just the two of us though more than time when other adults and kids are with us. Naturally the adults can’t help but to start talking to each other and I feel like that causes me to miss out on the conversations with Kye. We had a nice morning and I truly felt so spoiled by my sweet son!
Since Zach took the girls out for Valentine’s Day I wanted to have a nice date night with just Kye. We have done a good job of getting individual time with each child, but often it’s running errands and such rather than special time. And a lot of the time it’s Zach with Kye (like golfing) and me with Britt (at the house). This was a nice chance to get to go out and make some memories with my son! He got to pick where we ate and he was very excited!
Our town got a Mellow Mushroom not too long ago and Kye said he wanted to eat at the place with the big green guy out front 😉 Clever advertising!
Kye and I were both very, very disappointed with our experience. I didn’t realize the drug references at Mellow Mushroom (I mean I should have by the name huh? But we went to one with my dad in Gainesville, GA and it wasn’t like that so it just surprised me). I REALLY was turned off though by the amount of tvs. There was literally no where you could look without seeing a television screen. And a lot of the stuff being shown just wasn’t little kid friendly (at least in my opinion). It really, really bothered me. We couldn’t sit and enjoy a meal and visit because we were bombarded with entertainment in every direction. It felt overwhelming and obnoxious. And it made me sad to look around and see all these people just eating and watching the tvs. Why not just order pizza at home if that’s what you are wanting to do? It was a learning opportunity for Kye but bless his heart he was so frustrated by it because he spent the whole meal having to practice resisting the temptation to look and it was practically IMPOSSIBLE not to! I ended up moving and sitting directly in front of him and we tried to just look at each other a lot. We did like the pizza but we will NEVER eat there again.
We got out of there as fast as physically possible and both just felt RELIEVED when we walked out the door. We were SO happy to go to The Mix. We got to sit and talk and laugh and enjoy each other! THAT is what a date night is all about!!!
I am so honored and proud to be Kye’s mama. I know the days will come soon when he’ll be on REAL dates with girls and less interested in spending quality time with his mom. I pray he marries a girl who loves our family and who is down for me still having some one-on-one time with my first baby 🙂 He says I will still need to come over to his house every night to scratch his back and sing to him and tuck him in…I don’t expect my future daughter-in-law to be cool with that but maybe she’ll be cool with a mommy son date night every once in awhile 🙂
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