Encouraging our children’s interests

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It has been fun through the years to see how my children’s interests have developed over the years.  My oldest daughter is very artistic and loves to draw, paint, play musical instruments (the piano and now the bowed psaltry), do ballet and pointe, and do photography.  God has created each of our children individually with different talents and gifts…and as parents we need to do all we can to encourage them to develop those talents and gifts.

For my oldest daughter, it all started with beginning piano and dance lessons.  She loved it!  She started dance and piano when she was about 7.  She continues to take dance, but has not continued with piano lessons since our piano teacher moved away.  That has not stopped her from playing piano and continuing to learn.  Over the years she has played for offertory at church, and over the past year or so has played several times for the worship service.  Yes, this has stretched her but she took up the challenge and has done very well.

Later she started to take up some drawing.  We provided a notebook and sheet protectors for her to keep her drawings in.  She has really had fun drawing over the years.  When she wrote her first book, Skylark, she did all the illustrations for her book.  Here are a few of her drawings…

Now over the past 5 years or so she has gotten into one-stroke painting.  She started watching the Donna Dewberry show on TV, recording the episodes so she could watch them again, and started giving it a try.  We bought her a set of brushes and a few other supplies and she ran with it!  Here is a painting she did this past week on Valentine’s Day.  Isn’t it beautiful!  (By the way, my daughter is considering doing some painted items to sell on my site here.  Is there any interest for little painted wood plaques or small painted items?  She’d love to give it a try if there is interest.  Leave a comment and let me know!  Thanks!)  Ok..here is her painting….just done on some poster paper we had:

My 7-year-old son is learning how to draw with the “ream method”…that is he goes through a TON of paper as he learns to draw.  I found a neat learning to draw book in the public domain (published in 1913) and printed out quite a few pages for him to try.  (Here is the link where you can download this book:  https://www.archive.org/details/whattodrawhowtod00lutz).  He said they all looked hard at first, but them he started trying to draw them and he did very well!

My oldest son loves birds…so we got him some bird feeders, some bird field guides, and he is now a bird encyclopedia!  He makes suet to put out for the birds, and keeps the feeders stocked.  He has identified a ton of different birds that are coming to our feeders and could tell you all about those birds too.  He also enjoys taking pictures of the birds…some of which you have seen on my blog over the past several months.

I want to encourage you to really watch your children…to find out what special talents and gifts the Lord has given them.  Then do what you can to provide a way for them to develop those gifts.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of money either.  Our children are precious gifts…that we need to “unwrap”, find out what “makes them tick”, and set them on a path of discovery.  I am learning that as my children explore their passions, they learn more about God in the process.  They learn about beauty (my daughter’s dancing, drawing, painting, music – my son’s birds) and about how great of a creator God is (learning how birds live, survive).

What are your children interested in?  What can you do as a parent to encourage those interests?

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