Saturday, August 27, 2011

Jordan's Success

Today I am going to brag about my son.

He entered the 4-H County Fair. He put in 16 exhibits.

First, they were judged against a standard. He earned 14 blue ("Excellent") ribbons and 2 red ("very good") ribbons.

Then the blue ribbon exhibits were judged against other blue ribbon exhibits for placement. Jordan earned four first place ribbons and a second place ribbon.

Two of his first place ribbons were for cookies -- cutout cookies judged for taste and appearance and decorated cookies judged on appearance only. He was very careful about the decorations and did a really good job with them. He had to bake those cookies all on his own. I just provided a bit of monitoring for safety purposes, but he didn't even really need that.

He got one of his red ribbons for a duct tape creation, a tooth brush holder. He plans to make a wallet for that category next year. I hope our local hardware store has lots of sales on the stuff this year. (Or it would make a good Christmas present...)


His remaining 12 exhibits were in photography. This was interesting. He had earned only red ribbons in the State Competition this year, after two years of taking not only first place but the Big E Award as well. He was rather disappointed in himself and barely glanced at the judging sheets, refusing to look at them with me.

His photo mentor said, "Well, success is a poor teacher." So, up at CYC, I handed over the judging sheets to the photo mentor and he and Jordan went over them. They talked about how to improve the photos and his mentor even disagreed with the judges about one photo.

Jordan took that advice to heart. He made changes to one photo (via cropping) and entered it in County. It moved up from red to blue. Of the other 11, he earned two first places and a second. So all those reds at State, which Jordan saw as failure, became a great learning experience.


I am really proud of Jordan. I am also very thankful to his photo mentor, a professional photographer, who volunteers his time to teach Jordan in an area I can't.

Actually, Jordan has several people in his life like that. I have come to the conclusion that part of parenting, especially in the homeschooling world, is to expose your child to people who will love them and teach them. I am grateful that I have so many opportunities -- most via CYC -- to do that.


Anyway, good job Jordan!


And have a great day everyone.





By the way, if you are looking for a great professional photographer in New England, check out Jordan's photo mentor: http://www.MGNorris.com/



CYC, the Christian Youth Conference at Ocean Park, provides a quality spiritual and leadership development program for high school teens.

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