7. General Carpentry: He helped remodel an outdated, empty apartment with his father. He learned electric, drywall installation, dropped-ceiling replacement, LVP flooring installation, wallpaper installation, painting, and finish carpentry. The project took six months and he often worked on school days. Gasp!

8. Electronics: He has built several robotic creations from scratch.

My middle child is now in college. Second grade was her last year in the traditional school system. She stays busy 24/7 creating special works of many kinds.

1. Crochet: She started crocheting amigarumi animals at the age of 9. Her creations have won best-in-show at NC State Fair for three years. She has sold items at a local coffee shop that promotes local artists – Lucky Tree

She has written over 100 original crochet patterns and has recently started a crochet blog. The mission of the blog is to inspire crocheters to think up unique gift ideas. She offers free patterns. Check out lollysloopycreatures.

Minka our pet Aussiedoodle
Octopus at NC State Fair
Best in Show: Mama sloth with baby

2. Cello: My daughter began cello lessons at the age of five. She has played in city, private, and college orchestras. She has also performed in various quartets for outreach and charitable efforts. This will be her seventh year playing with the Philharmonic Association orchestras and her third year interning with the organization.

Performing with Triangle Youth Symphony
Meymandi Hall in Raleigh, NC

3. Music composition: My daughter has taken music beyond cello performance and delved deeply into music composition. She has composed over 80 songs. Her posts can be found on Sound Cloud. She began composing music using free downloadable software from Musescore.

4. Coding: A defining moment for my daughter was a computer coding class she took at our co-op. This course opened a wonderful world of creation and has provided direction for a college major: game development and simulation. In high school she took CGO courses at the community college and was able to win a substantial STEM scholarship to a four-year college. She is now in college majoring in computer science at college.

I am thankful for the mom who stepped up to teach coding to a bunch of elementary and middle school students. The book she used was Super Scratch Programming Adventure! This course sparked interest and know-how in game design and 3-D modeling with animation. She has designed her own game using coding. Below is her most popular animated model. Her other models can be found on Sketchfab.

5. Photography and Videography: As an intern with the Philharmonic Association, my daughter video records and photographs music events. She spends many hours editing videos for the organization’s website. Below is one of several videos that she has edited.

A video she helped edit

6. Music Composing: She began composing music in the second grade and now take composing classes in college. She has composed over 100 arrangements. Shes uses her arrangements for the video games she creates.

7. eBay sales: Although sales are not her favorite activity, my daughter sells on eBay. She favors selling clothing, home decorator items, and kitchenware she finds at thrift stores. Having the time to try a wide variety of activities lets a person know what she doesn’t want to do in the future!

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