When Lia came home from school all excited one afternoon in September about entering her school's PTA Reflections Art Content, I must admit that I wasn't exactly thrilled. We already have so much going on in our lives with all of her other activities, that I wasn't looking to add another thing to the list...but how can a mother say 'no' to a child's enthusiasm to enter into a district-wide, art contest? After going back and forth for a week or two or three between composing a song, drawing a picture, or writing a story, Lia finally committed to writing a story. She then began writing a lovely narrative describing our family trip to Hawaii in great detail. After several days of working on this, she changed her mind and decided to scrap it for a fictional story called, "The Cutter Who Wanted to Climb." She started writing a rather strange story about a girl who enjoys climbing trees and cutting them. I thought that it was a very strange change to make from a personal narrative, but decided to just stay supportive and positive. After finishing up the story a few days before the deadline of November 1st (which I thought was awful as it was the day after Halloween), I quickly typed up her story leaving large, empty spaces on each page for Lia to then go back and illustrate. Since Halloween fell on a Monday night this year, I told her that this story had to be totally done on Sunday night so that we were not stressing over this while trying to trick-or-treat and enjoy our Halloween evening. Lia didn't have time to illustrate the story until Sunday after church. With the exception of taking a break for dinner, Lia locked herself in our home office and worked on drawing and coloring eight very detailed pictures for SEVEN hours! I couldn't believe how incredible focused she was for so long and how incredibly hard she work on creating such beautiful and thoughtful pictures. I was very proud of her to say the least.
And, so tonight, the kids and I drove down to attend a Reflections Gallery Night in Lia's school library. It was a very pleasant night complete with fancy cheeses, meats, and crackers for refreshments! Lia's story had been mounted on a lovely display board and even had a ribbon on it announcing that she had advanced to the district level. Luckily, this same award happened to her two good friends, Mollie and Sienna, who had also submitted art projects, too. The girls were all very happy and excited to say the least!
Lia and Sienna both chose to write stories for their submissions, so their projects were on display next to each other on the "story table." Here they are showing off their ribbons while standing in front of their stories.
Lia with her ribbon and her story!
Good job, Lia! We are so proud of you.
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