Santa brought our five year old a camera for Christmas, one of those small Coolpix cameras with a shiny red cover and a pink carrying case. She had been asking for one for a while and was absolutely delighted.
On the first day she took around 230 photos. By the end of the second day, I downloaded almost 500. Around a third are too blurred to see clearly but the rest turned out great. They are mostly of ordinary objects but I think they are extraordinary because they reveal what she sees.
Through her camera, I'm learning more about her and what she thinks. I realize that she is her own person, with her own experiences and her own view of the world. But I often fail to take this into account in the midst of the daily errands, etc. When I looked through her photos, I was surprised at how many things she had captured that I never even noticed. I don't mean to say she's a photographic genius or anything. She's a normal, curious kid with what is essentially a new toy. But her perspective is uniquely her own and I feel privileged to have a window into it.
In order to scaffold the experience and enrich her learning, I'm planning on creating photos books (copying four photos to a Word doc and then printing them out and stapling them together) and letting her write the captions and short, simple stories using the photos. I would love to hear other ideas too.
(All photos by Safyre, aged 5, taken in Kuwait.)
On the first day she took around 230 photos. By the end of the second day, I downloaded almost 500. Around a third are too blurred to see clearly but the rest turned out great. They are mostly of ordinary objects but I think they are extraordinary because they reveal what she sees.
Through her camera, I'm learning more about her and what she thinks. I realize that she is her own person, with her own experiences and her own view of the world. But I often fail to take this into account in the midst of the daily errands, etc. When I looked through her photos, I was surprised at how many things she had captured that I never even noticed. I don't mean to say she's a photographic genius or anything. She's a normal, curious kid with what is essentially a new toy. But her perspective is uniquely her own and I feel privileged to have a window into it.
In order to scaffold the experience and enrich her learning, I'm planning on creating photos books (copying four photos to a Word doc and then printing them out and stapling them together) and letting her write the captions and short, simple stories using the photos. I would love to hear other ideas too.
(All photos by Safyre, aged 5, taken in Kuwait.)
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