September 2008

I have a lot of photo updates ready for you now. Some are for WAX, some are close ups of paintings I forgot to get pictures of before. At the end I talk about my kids

First of all though:

NATIONAL WOMANS ART EXHIBITION

October 1st- 31st

Poverty Bay Club

Gisborne

Opening night: 1st October 2008, 6pm-9pm

Tickets on sale now. For more information click here.

Letters of a Lover – Full

These next two are from Common Ground.

This one is for WAX. These paintings are extremely hard to photograph for some reason!

My son Davis has been covered in Chicken Pox for the past week. He LOVES to pose for the camera, I can’t turn it on without him jumping in front of it wanting to have the first photo, so here is one I thought was too cute not to share.

I also have to share a photo of my little girl. She came home today with a letter and a prize. She won a colouring competition! Her picture was voted the best in her school. It was a competition run by an electrical company that had been at her school teaching about the dangers of electricity. I’m so proud of her. She keeps blowing me away. When she brought it home to colour in she only had one pencil to use on it and was just going to use that but my heart sank, I couldn’t let her do that. The poor thing wanted to win so badly, we had a conversation that went something like this.

“Look Mummy, there’s a colouring competition. I hope I win. I love colouring.”

“I know darling, you’re so good at it but there will be a lot of people entering, even some older children. You never know though aye? You might just win. Don’t use that pencil though ok? Where have you put all your crayons and pencils?”

*SHRUG*

“I think you stopped looking after them properly so I threw them all out, huh.” (I know, mean mummy.) “Ok, wait there, I’ll go get you mine, you can use Mummys.”

Then she sat there next to me and coloured it in “like a rainbow.” Beautiful.

Every week she comes home with some good news. A certificate, a certificate and a book, ribbons that no-one else gets, her name in a newsletter, more books, the news shes being shifted to a class where she’ll be in a reading group with 8 1/2 year olds (shes barely 6 and one of two children to do this, shes in a higher group than the other though we’re told). I swear she’s had more awards in her year at school than I have in my lifetime.

Her parent teacher interviews were this week but I missed them due to 2 boys with chicken pox and working towards a deadline. Apparently the teacher showed a chart of the class indicating their reading level. The children in her class were at, under, or slightly above their age, then a bit further up was the other child that moved and then way at the top was our little monkey.

We don’t do anything, it’s absolutely all her. I do wonder if things really are genetic because this happened to both hubby and I in school. We were both labeled ‘smart’ but were both pretty lazy at doing anything with it. I left school early and became a hairdresser and according to my hubby, he just went to school to play basketball lol. I remember re-enroling at my last school and being asked if I’d like to rejoin my old classmates. I said, uhh, no thanks, which stunned the guy. My logic? Why would I want to be given MORE work than almost all the other kids at high school and the same amount of time in exams to complete more work. It made no sense to me. I guess I was smart huh lol.

At home we’re really relaxed about school. While we do encourage learning through words, books, play and example we never push anything. It seems to be working well. I’m always told I have respectful children so it’s not like they’re left to run wild either. I was raised that brains were the be all and end all and a lot of the time it brought me to tears in secret. Not because I failed but because no matter how well I did, it was never quite good enough. It made my parents want more from me, with NO help or effort from them when it all came down to it. No rewards for good results either. I’m not socially awkward, far from it but I do think it gave me anxiety. I’ve made peace with it all and know my parents just did what they thought was right but I’m always conscious of putting unnecessary pressure on a child. I make mistakes too though. Anyway, here she is a little messy on a Friday after school, holding her letter and her prize. Her little brother (the middle child) is so good with this thing!

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