Kenzie Writes Her Letters, Gives a Talk, and Saves a Small African nation from Starvation

By no interference of my own, Kenzie has learned to write her ABCs. I wish I could claim some sort of teaching and motherhood skill, but I'm not quite sure where she picked it up.
I was weeding the flowers while the girls fought, I mean, played nicely in the driveway. When I walked over I discovered a long stream of ABCs written in chalk. "Well, where did you learn that?" I asked. "I don't know. From the Letter Factory," she replied. Well, what do you know? I do believe in educational TV. We don't have TV at home, but in Alabama we found PBS in our hotel room and have loved it ever since.

I believe in it so much that this week I bought about every Word World and Super Why DVD available. I found some good prices on used and new ones at Amazon. Kenzie always begs me to watch a movie and I was getting tired of telling her why Ariel is a brat and how Snow White should have been a wee bit wiser in the ways of the world. I figured Word World and Super Why, awesome reading shows that we fell in love with in Alabama, would be way better than that wimpy deer and those wimpy princesses. (Gratuitous "SandLot" reference.)

On August 2, Kenzie also gave her first talk in Primary. We memorized it on the way home from our camping trip. I asked her what she wanted to say in her talk about how we can strengthen our families. She said, "Keep our rooms clean and help our sisters." We talked about some other things we can do and then I put them into rhyme so she could memorize it easily.

Here's the text of her talk:

I want to strengthen my family
so we can be together eternally.
Here are some things we try to do
to help our family you can do them too.
We pray together at meals and at night.
We play together and try not to fight.
We have Family Home Evening on Mondays
And we go to church on Sunday.
I love my family we try to be strong.
We can be together if we choose right not wrong.

She helped me choose some pictures to print from the computer clip art to go along with it and then she colored them.

When she got up to give the talk, she completely forgot what she was supposed to say. But instead of freezing, she just started talking, saying random sentences like "My family" and "The word of God." I almost died laughing before I managed to get up to the podium and help her with the first sentence. After that she was a pro. We were bursting with pride.

Good job Kenzie.

As for the African nation, she hasn't saved it yet. She's just working on it by eating all of her lunch, even the crust.