Views from the Porch: Z's QUEST

Every year since Kindergarten Z has worked on a QUEST project. The first year was about bugs, then about tigers, then about Belarus. This year he got the opportunity to pick his own topic. All year he told me he was doing it on spies. Sounded great to me. What ever works and has enough information for the research portion of it. When it came time to commit he decided to go with the history of male cheer leading. I can handle that as well. It's an area of interest for him and there's plenty of information about it.
Every year we end up rushing him to get the project done because he just is not organized enough to know when parts are due and to actually do them. This year I got into panic zone because I hadn't seen anything brought home about the project. I e-mailed his teacher to make sure he was up to date and using time in class wisely. She said that he was working in class, but was disappointed to hear that I had not seen the binder that I was supposed to be signing off on every Thursday that tells me what has been worked on and what is due. Of course when Z got home I started chewing him out for getting behind again and that they would kick him out of QUEST if he could not handle the projects. I demanded that he bring his binder home and review what had been done. It was a Thursday. He said he had the binder. He was able to show me what was due when and what he had completed so far. I was flabbergasted! His teacher sends weekly e-mails letting us know what to expect in the project for that week. She said something about working on the product over Spring Break. Of course it was late in the week (OK Saturday) when I finally go on to him about actually putting something on paper for his product.
Z decided to design his own cheer uniform - oh and make it. I thought I would share with you all some of the pictures I've taken along the road to project completion. I am just so proud of him! He has really taken onership of this project and is getting things done.