Reflections

About two months ago, Trinity came home with a flyer from her school's PTA announcing the year's theme for a program called Reflections. Students have a chance to put their creative skills to good use through photography, dance choreography, literature or visual arts. They are given a theme, they choose a category and then go to work. The day she brought it home, she said she wanted to participate. It sounded like a good idea to me and we put the form away to work on another day - after all, we had about a month before it was due.

Fast forward three weeks and four days . . . Trinity sees the form and gets all excited because she wants to do it. (If you're keeping track, yes, that means we have three days before it's now due.) We chatted and she said she wanted to do photography. However, all of her suggestions weren't going to happen, due to locations and time constraints. So, I suggested that she try literature - maybe writing a poem. She agrees and goes to start work.

Over the next hour and a half or so, we talked about ideas she has for the theme, "Beauty Is". She decided to focus on beauty in the weather. She spoke and I wrote down her ideas in her words. I wanted to encourage her to do her best and elaborate further than, "The sun is pretty" without doing the project for her - a very fine line to balance along. I was very pleased with her ideas. She took what I had written down and put them into sentences.

The next day she came home from school saying that she didn't want to do "Beauty Is". I asked why and she said she just didn't - translation, she didn't like being pushed to think any further. Then she said (with all seriousness), "Mom, I'm just involved with too many activities." I tried not to laugh right in her face on that one. (She's only involved in church. That's it.) So, I told her that I wouldn't let her quit and that she could type up what she had written out and turn it in tomorrow - I wouldn't try to push her into elaborating any more. She turned it in the next day and we really didn't think any more about it.

Jump forward to this week. Her school had a little morning-time reception for all the entries for the Reflections. There were 95 entries across the various categories, with photography and literature being the categories with the most entries. She wanted one of us to go, so I took her to school and we headed to the cafeteria. They had every one's entry on display with their name and a certificate for their entry. Then we got to Trinity's ~






Did you notice there her certificate said, "winning entry"? I missed that the first time we passed it. A few entries past her display, I saw another winning entry certificate and went back to look at Trinity's. Apparently, there were some entries in each category and grade that were chosen as winners to move forward to the next level. During the reception, they took time to recognize all the winners in all the categories. Here are the literature winners.

We are very excited, especially since it is all her own work. Congrats, Trinity!!!

Here is her entry:

Beauty is in the sun.
I think it is beautiful when it shines through the trees.
And how it looks in the sunset
I also like how it reflects off the lake.

Beauty is in the rain.
Without rain we would have no rainbows.
It helps the seed grow into great flowers.
It is fun to see and hear the rain splash into puddles.

Beauty is in the clouds.
I think it is pretty when the clouds make stuff.
The clouds allow us to see the sun rays.
They are also a pretty white.

Beauty is in all kinds of weather.