My granddaughter is out of school for the summer. She is enjoying her first couple of days without a schedule. She is exhausted from the rush of activity and homework that seemed to get piled on at the bitter end. She is sleeping in, chilling out, and generally beginning to unwind.
It won’t last. She will become bored, but the rule in my house is that if boredom is expressed verbally, the bored person gets handed the broom!
She’s a teenager. She’s a pretty good kid, but she often tiptoes near the precipice of negativity. I have a project in mind to help her with that.
Beginning next week, she must take one photo per day during her summer break. It must be a photo of something happy, funny, beautiful, or in some way uplifting and positive.
Each day, she will put that photo into a PowerPoint slide show and then have something happy to show herself at the end of summer.
Last night, I told her about her assignment. She doesn’t sit on my knee anymore. She sits on the floor in front of my rocking chair when we have serious conversations. She looks up at me with intensity, but I find the arrangement endearing and intimate. She began to laugh instantly when she heard my directions.
I read her mind and then added: “Even if you take a photo of your smiling face everyday, it will meet my requirements.”
GN continued to laugh. “Gram! That would be so awesome to have a PowerPoint slide show of my laughing face!”
She has begun her paradigm shift already . . . even without clicking the shutter.
We’ll see how she feels about the geometry project she will begin the same day as the photo project . . . 
Grammy Summer School will soon be in session.
What a wonderful assignment! Would you please assign it to me, too? (The photo assignment, not the geometry one – if they only come in a set, I’ll just have to flunk.)
Consider yourself assigned! Skip the geometry.
Okay. Thank you! I’m taking this assignment seriously, so feel free to check up on me. I think it will be a challenge to remember to do it every day. I love that GN thinks it would be fun to have a slideshow of her happy face. I want to love the idea of a bunch of photos of me!
I’ll be happy to check in on you regarding this project!
You have such creative ideas! We have our 1-week vacation planned and swimming lessons on the schedule for little N. We will putter in the garden, and have some play dates with the cousins–and spend some time at the public library. I’m planning on working with little N on her phonics and memorize some scripture–but I want to make it fun. That’s a challenge for an active 6 yr old who hates to sit still. I must admit to being a little envious of those who have summers off from work. I’ve been so busy with our Gr8 that I haven’t put much thought into it. Any ideas?
Kathy: I don’t actually get the entire summer off. I am only off between the end of the Spring term and the Summer sessions at the college. I’m back to work on Monday.
Hmmm . . . ideas for a 6 yr old. . . . sounds like you’ve got it covered. For the scriptures with my granddaughter, I found 2 origami books: one for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. We folded some of the figures and we talked about the passages they came from. We also made popsicle stick frames to put around some pics she colored to look like stained glass windows.
We still go to the library. Our library day is Sunday.
My granddaughter’s fav thing to do was “playground hopping”. We have lots of nice playgrounds in our area, and they have different features, so we rotated playgrounds based on what she felt like doing: swinging, climbing, paintint the flowers that surrounded one, or the playground with the obstacle course.
We had bubble day, with bubble wrap, bubble gum and bottles of bubbles . . .
For the evening, I used to shine a light on a wall and make shadow puppets, or trace GN’s silhouette, then cut it out to trace onto black paper. She liked those.
Pressing little flowers, then making pictures. . .
Oh geometry. I’d definitely need a happy slide show if I had to do geometry.
Travis: Probably not if you had to figure the dimensions of square, round, triangular, or rectangular CAKE!!!