Every Sunday morning, my wife heads out to bask in a 90 minute yoga class to center herself as she prepares for another week of teaching and inspiring high school students in her classroom and acting as VP of Education for our growing educational blogging resource, Stageoflife.com.
If you count her drive time to and from the yoga studio (Evolution Power Yoga in York, PA), that leaves me about 2 hours with my daughters to do...whatever...we...want.
--Once in a while we eat lots of cookies.
--Other days we run around and chase each other through the house.
--Sometimes I find myself working as running a start-up company and loyalty agency means that work really never ends.
But lately, I've been making a point to put my laptop (and cookies) away and instead spend those two hours doing something with my girls. Last week we went to the park. This week, we made a movie.
Yes, a movie. A silent movie.
It happened to be a Christmas-themed silent horror movie in fact. My first grader, Raina, helped me pull it all together, from writing the script to acting in it to serving as 2nd cameraman to playing the score on the piano (yes, that's her little six year old fingers playing the background music).
As for my two-year-old, Story? Well...we cast her as the lead role in this feature...the monster.
It was type casting, yes, but I see a bright future if she decides to pursue acting. :)
Working through this project with my daughters over the course of 90 some minutes was a remarkable experience. In less than two hours, we...
- Wrote the script
- Plotted out the camera shots
- Got the monster into "make-up"
- Acted out and filmed all the footage
- Loaded it into the computer
- Edited it
- Packaged in the title slides
- Recorded the background music
- And uploaded the finished movie to YouTube
When Mommy came home, we sat her down and showed her the film, which we dubbed, "The Christmas Monster." She laughed and smiled and gave her girls big hugs for doing "such a great job."
And then I saw it - a look of complete joy in Raina's eyes. It wasn't pride. It was something more like a creative spark being ignited. My little first grade daughter was with me every step of the way as we put that movie together. She's already talking about our "next movie." I wonder what we'll come up with next time when Mommy is out at yoga.
I encourage every parent to put the laptop away. Put your phone down. Shut off Facebook. And create something with your kids...
And oh...I also attached the note I drew and put in Raina's lunch on Friday. It's Christmas time (obviously) and I'm wishing for a little snow. You can take the man out of Minnesota (my homeland), but you can't take the Minnesota out of the man. Come on, Pennsylvania, send some snow our way...let's make it a White Christmas.
Till tomorrow...
Eric
--CEO, StageofLife.com
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