{"id":1551,"date":"2011-06-11T06:29:01","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T06:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/?p=1551"},"modified":"2011-06-11T16:56:59","modified_gmt":"2011-06-11T16:56:59","slug":"non-traditional-school-pictures-%e2%80%a2-riviera-playschool-%e2%80%a2-spring-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/11\/non-traditional-school-pictures-%e2%80%a2-riviera-playschool-%e2%80%a2-spring-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"non-traditional school pictures \u2022 riviera playschool \u2022 spring 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

My girls have been attending this amazing, unique preschool for the past couple years. I call it a “Paradise for Preschoolers,” because it encourages children to do all the things that most parents won’t allow at home: dig in the dirt, paint with their hands, splash around in the water, run barefoot through the mud–in short, get good & dirty experiencing the world around them. It’s not that I don’t allow my kids to get messy at home–it’s more that it stresses me out, because, you know, I’m the mom; I have an agenda, & that usually includes trying to return things to a tidy & clean state at some point today, or at least sometime this month.<\/p>\n

Riviera PlaySchool<\/a>‘s program is a combination of constructivist & humanist ideas; but most importantly for me, their curriculum includes a lot of work on communication & conflict resolution. They have a very good teacher-student ratio (1:4), which allows teachers to really spend a lot of time guiding kids through their struggles & frustrations. Let’s face it: Life is at least 50% difficult situations & emotions, right? We really need to help our children acquire & practice the skills that get them through that “shadow” half of living–not just teach them to obey, comply, & be nice. They will experience failure, heartbreak, & disagreements. They will witness cruelty, unfairness, & betrayal. How they respond to those things will determine their ability to succeed and be happy–which is what every parent prays for. Their ability to get through disappointment, confusion, & pain is going to be far more important than their grades or their test scores. I truly believe that–& I was a high school teacher for 11 years.<\/p>\n

I love this school & its mission–& I have learned so much from the teachers &, as a result, improved my parenting. I feel so fortunate to have found this community for my kids & myself, & I love contributing to it in any way I can. This month, I did the student portraits, & in keeping with the spirit of PlaySchool, we kept things spontaneous & fun. I hung out & let the kids get to know me & my camera, & then one by one, we invited them to have their portraits taken. I also snapped lots of candids of them exploring their world & enjoying the PlaySchool environment–creating art, investigating bugs, communing with friends. Traditional school portraits are always so stiff & rarely show children genuinely smiling, so I hoped to create something different–lively portraits with kids authentically relaxed & being themselves–making funny faces, studying the camera contemplatively, expressing their personalities. It was a joy to get to know them all through my lens!<\/p>\n

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My girls have been attending this amazing, unique preschool for the past couple years. I call it a “Paradise for Preschoolers,” because it encourages children to do all the things that most parents won’t allow at home: dig in the dirt, paint with their hands, splash around in the water, run barefoot through the mud–in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,46],"tags":[33,34,110,12,49,26,109,119,17],"class_list":["post-1551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-babies-children","category-outdoors","category-preschool","tag-black-white","tag-colour","tag-babies-children","tag-natural","tag-natural-light","tag-on-location","tag-outdoors","tag-preschool","tag-toddlers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}