Red Letter Day

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been praying and thinking a lot lately about how to encourage our kids to reach their potential, and for wisdom in knowing what that is. It's been on my heart because Megan is highly self-motivated and is whipping through her school work with lightning speed. She's easily 2 grades ahead of herself, and catching up to Ethan in most subjects. Ethan is somewhat bothered by this, but is unmotivated to work harder than he does.

So part of my prayer is seeing where Ethan is excelling so I can affirm his strengths. Yesterday it was easy to do. The previous day I had the kids practice printing s, e, r, and a, because they had both become a bit sloppy in them. Ethan took it to heart, and yesterday his printing was excellent! You could see he'd really put in some effort. Later, I had the kids try to copy Monet's "Impression: Sunrise" painting (which I love). I gave them chalk pastels and said, "You don't have to copy it exactly. I just want you to try to follow the colors he used and blend them like he did." Ethan came in later with a picture that looked strikingly like the original! We ended our day finishing up reports we are doing for presentation day Friday. At first Ethan was stuck, not sure how to put his notes about hippos down on paper. When I took over typing for him, he was able to organize them into a paper more easily. He then got excited about printing hippo pictures that corresponded to his work, and pasted them into a folder with a introduction on the front and his paper on the back.

It was an encouraging day for me as well as for him. I feel like God opened my eyes a little to how well both our kids are doing. It's probably been there all along and the difference is that I was looking for it.