Thursday, June 30, 2011

Nurturing Our Children's Interests & Gifts

I am linking up with
Learning All the Time's
Favorite Resource This Week

Our favorite resource this week has been
allowing our nine year old to use our cameras!

Our nine year old took all of the photos in this post.  
She loves to take pictures.  


Yes, possibly it is because my husband and I spend many weekends exploring the world through the lenses of our Nikons with our girls in tow.  
But I do think that P has a good eye.  
We gladly hand over our Nikons.  
Jason has been teaching her about f-stops and aperture settings.  
We've been debating giving her our old Kodak DSLR or getting her her own Nikon.

There is a lot of debate as to whether talent is innate or learned.  I believe that we have an innate interest in certain things.  I believe it is up to parents to figure out what their children are interested in and provide opportunities for their child to explore that interest.

I am blessed with an awesome job.  I work at our public library.  
P was given her first photography assignment of being the official photographer of our 
Summer Reading Kickoff last Saturday :)

Our society defines success by material gain.  You know that whole "He who dies with the most toys wins" philosophy.

I define success as setting out to do something and accomplishing it.  I would rather be happy and at peace than have material success.

Our society seems to value athletic and academic competition and conformity over artistic endeavors and thinking outside the box.  One keeps people in line and the other is unpredictable.  My girls fall into the latter category, the artistic outside the box thinking category, the unpredictable category.  It was one of the many reasons why we pulled them out of school.  We wanted to encourage, nurture and inspire that side of their unique personalities.   We wanted to allow them to explore that side of themselves and not be forced to conform or undervalue themselves based on society's norms and mores.

I am grateful to be able to raise my creative children in an environment where they can explore their creativity and have room to grow and explore and not be stifled by societal demands & expectations.