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She takes a camera to town
February 10, 2013
Watching our children grow, learn and unfold on their own schedule and into their own gifts is one of the special privileges of parenting.
We don't want to box our children in but as they show creative gifts and intellectual aptitudes we honor, celebrate, encourage, and educate them according to their unique person.
Celine is a thinker, a voracious reader, an introvert, a doll and miniatures artist and designer, a geek.
Laurent is an gifted graphic artist (well on his way to 10,000 hours), a sunny extrovert, an intuitive with high people intelligence.
Brienne shows kinesthetic and self knowledge smarts. She's competitive and very physical. A natural writer and story teller.
Brienne lives in the shadow of her older sister's command of language and she can't use paper and pen to graphically express ideas the way her brother does.
But as she comes into her own - physically and creatively - Brienne is recognizing her own talents and taking pride in them. And so do we! Brienne is naturally self expressive, with a flair for the flamboyant. You don't have to encourage her to tell you what's going on inside, she'll let you know!
Brienne notices, remembers and shares. More and more she is using creative writing and photography to do this.
I am currently writing a piece on technology tools and philosophy in our homeschool in which I share the primary technology tools each of our children uses and why we choose those tools for their specific needs. For now, I'll tell you that Brienne uses an iPad fairly extensively for photography and writing (as well as audio book listening).
I have been teaching Brienne about photography principles but mostly she just experiments and takes hundreds and hundreds of photos.
Although Brienne uses her iPad a lot, she likes to use our Sony camera also. That's the camera that was used for taking all the photos on this post. The camera is easy to use, there's fewer buttons than my Nikon, and it's lighter.
Brienne's taking an online course right now through Playful Learning Ecademy called Through the Lens: Photo Journaling. A course that pairs writing prompts with photo assignments. Something my other two kids would never be interested in but something perfectly suited to Brienne's gifts and interests.
I don't know where this interest will take Brienne. It needn't "take" her anywhere. She's just interested in the story. The story told in words. A story told in pictures. Sounds a lot like her mom.
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Sarah on Feb. 10, 2013, 6:05 p.m.
It is so fun to hear about your children and their interests... They really are so creative! I also think it is super interesting because they very much (seem! ...obviously I haven't met them) to mirror my own family (regarding the correlation between birth order and personality/interests). Perhaps I am trying to see the patterns but it struck me. I especially think that oldest girls have a tendency to be "geek-y" (at least almost all of my friends are both oldest girls and voracious readers--often introverts, also). My younger brother and sister are twins (14). My sister is a dancer, also with very good with self-knowledge. I wouldn't describe my brother as "intuitive with high people intelligence" but he LOVES being creative in a way that (unfortunately) not many boys are. He is definitely a sunny extrovert (at least when he gets enough sleep :). Ahh... so maybe only Céline and I are similar? Well, if Laurent every wants to see another (bigger) boy being creative... or Brienne wants to see another kid who loves cameras, here is my brother's video account (beware--one is a skiing video...you may want to save that for later): https://vimeo.com/peterkoch. He'd be happy to talk about video or photography (although I think you could probably teach your kids way more about digital photography than he could). Brienne, if you see this, keep up the awesome work! I'd love to hear your words/photo story... your pictures on the ipad are beautiful!
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Sarah on Feb. 10, 2013, 6:07 p.m.
That is not to say I don't think that as many boys can be creative... just that (for a bunch of reasons) fewer boys pursue creative passions.
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Catherine Forest on Feb. 11, 2013, 3:22 a.m.
That is so awesome. I love what you are saying here, Renee. No, it doesn't need to take her anywhere. This is what speaks to her right now and it is soooo important as a third child (my little Mathilde is also finding herself more in those last couple of months through music-making, something nor JF and I are proficient in... ).
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Jess on Feb. 12, 2013, 12:16 p.m.
Oh... what beautiful snapshots, preserved beauty, if you will, of her own personal story. A whisper into her worldview. Please tell her thank you for the willingness to share them with us. Such courage & vulnerability.
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Julie on Feb. 10, 2013, 1:55 p.m.
Oh, please keep posting the courses you use/recommend. Not that I want to know what you are using, but you use courses and books etc. that I have never heard of or run across before. It so helps me give my kids lots of opportunities. I have been looking for a course like this for my girls. Do you have any recommendations for art classes? My girls love to draw everything. I am not an artist. They have checked out drawing books from the library and have used them, watched youtube videos etc, but I have been looking for a class for them from an artist. The classes in town offered are for arts and crafts and while they like the crafts, they are things we have done or could do at home. They want to know how to draw faces and animals and depth and scenery. They are serious artists or want to be and I have to figure out how to make that happen. Do you have any suggestions or have heard of any on-line art classes? Another question...I noticed the pink boots...are they keens? they are winter boots right? if so are they warm and what style are they?
Kika on Feb. 10, 2013, 5:54 p.m.
Hi Julie, I just wanted to mention that sometimes your local art/pottery guild might offer art classes or, if you live in a larger centre, quality art supply stores sometimes have studios and classes. I live in a small town and will seek out local artists to offer homeschool art classes geared to my family's needs. Whenever we've wanted a class we have found local artists very happy to help us out:)