Love Around the World

Each year in February, Liam's school hosts an event called Love Around the World.  It's basically an international festival/celebration.  Each class is assigned a different continent.  They prepare a special presentation in the weeks leading up to the event, and then on the big day, the classes perform their presentations for the parents, and then in each class, there are artifacts & foods from that particular continent.  Last year Liam had just joined his new class.  He ended up not wanting to participate in the presentation.  We had high hopes for this year, since he's now been in there for a year - he knows the other kids better, he knows the teacher better, and he's just more familiar with the school.  His class had North America this year, so they worked on a square dance.  They also learned all the verses to Skip to My Lou.  I baked some Guatemalan corn muffins for the food protion, and we had rounded up as many North American things from around our house as we could find.  We sent Liam off to school dressed in his Woody costume from Halloween, since they had asked them to dress like cowboys for the square dance.  We arrived at the school on Friday morning and all the classes were outside on the playground, where the performances would take place.  By the way, Liam was the only kid out there without a coat, and it was COLD.  Why did he not have a coat?  Because his teacher had sent an email the night before saying to dress the children warmly because coats would not be allowed during the performance.  So we just didn't even bother sending a jacket with him that day.  D'oh...Anyway, his class was the 5th class to go.  By that point he had seen us, and had come over to us, and had plenty of time to get it in his head that he was not going to participate, and there was pretty much nothing we could do about it.  So, for the 2nd year in a row, he sat on the ground watching, while the rest of his class performed the dance.  Sigh...I'm not sure what his problem is.  It's a little disappointing to show up every year only to have him refuse to participate. His class sang Skip to My Lou for the parents once they got back to the classroom, and he wouldn't join in that either.  But within minutes of that being over, he was all excited & ready to go try the food.  We tried some different things, and then visited the other classrooms briefly before heading home.  Even though he's not in them, here are some cute pictures of his class square dancing.  He did cooperate for a picture with his teacher - in fact, he requested it.  I guess that's something!