Remove educational boundaries, encourage creativity and watch children soar

Eight-year-old Eddie is super-creative.

I mean he is super-creative.

He loves crafting, painting, making, sewing, drawing… he’s just a creator of the nth degree.

He loves to read, loves science, loves to find out how things work and why, but his natural leaning is towards anything creative.

I swear, there is nothing this child cannot do if he sets his mind to it.

Eddie has learnt a lot about being in front of the camera during our time filming, but he has also learnt a lot about being behind it too.  In fact, the whole process of filming with the crew has been a fabulous learning experience for the whole family.

In my post Redefining Education I wrote:

Education isn’t just about teaching children what we think they should know and asking them to perform back to us like seals in a circus.

It’s about allowing them to learn about things they love or are interested in, in a natural way they feel comfortable with and letting them take the lead.

The enthusiasm they exude through an hour or two of learning about something they enjoy results in an education that hundreds of hours in a classroom could never give, no matter how good the teacher.

Have you ever considered what skills & talents are lost by the time a child reaches 16 because ‘it’s not real education’?

I know that all children have something they love doing and that they are talented in or skilled at.  I also know that few of these children are given the opportunity to turn that love, that skill and that talent into something more simply because we are so set in our opinion of what a real education is, that we’ re missing out on the what-ifs.

What if there was time to nurture these skills?

What if we saw creativity as being as important as the sciences, or maths?

What if we encouraged our children in developing the interests they love instead of forcing them to put them to one side in pursuit of the straight A-grades they are ‘supposed’ to have in the three

Eddie has provided us all with one answer to the what-ifs.

Here is an eight-year-old who loves creating, who has been given the opportunity, the time and the encouragement to do just that.

I know that both he and I would appreciate you watching this short movie he made and if you think it’s any good, or you think it would be an encouragement to others, please do share it, or leave a message of encouragement for him.  Who knows, you may be watching a future movie-maker blossoming before you right now!