Catching Diamonds: Fostering Imagination and Creating Enchantment with the Children in Your Life, and with Yourself

Catching Diamonds:

Collins' book reminds us of Einstein's famous quote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge". Collins urges us to be more fully present in moments with children, with others, and with ourselves while seizing every opportunity to see the unusual, the quirky, and the everyday potential for magic in the world around us.

Traveling along these roads with the children in your life will inspire curiosity in their young minds and will fire their imaginations. This book is a treasure trove of charming ideas and activities that are useful and fun for parents, grandparents, and anyone involved with children. It is a gift on the path to engaging with children in delightful and meaningful ways to build their imaginations, joy, creativity, self-reliance and self-respect. This book is a literary, magical mystery guide for engaging children. And like any good magical mystery tour guide, one should always have it handy when the impulse to delve into expansive playful and connected realms strikes.

Children are individually unique, and each child has the potential to grow and develop into a well-functioning and playful adult. Exposed to ways of seeing the world in the way Collins' does, which is though the lens of spontaneity, beauty, adventure and potential, to name a few, adds to their journey into adulthood.

These ideas are also generative for your own life force with building blocks of intention, lightness and laughter. Catching Diamonds opens doors we've forgotten about and hands us a roadmap of streets that have faded into distant memory.

This essential book reveals Linda's secrets of entering into these expansive realities and outlines easy ways to remember that we are all artists weaving magic and wonder into moments in our lives when we are curious, playful and aware.

Linda Collins was born and grew up in Missoula, Montana, which is close to the mountains and many adventures. She graduated from Montana State University with a Bachelor's degree in Nursing, and spent the next five years working in the most restrictive youth psychiatric facility in Billings, Montana. Three of those years she ran a survivors' group. After divorcing when her children were young, she went back to school to get her Master's degree and Certification in Rehabilitation Counseling. The last 27 years she has worked as an RN Case Manager for the in-home Medicaid Waiver Program. These clients range from infants to the elderly with all manner of both physical and mental disabilities. She still lives in Billings, Montana, where she met her husband, Jim Collins in 1993. Their most favorite adventures include their children and five grandchildren who all live close by in Bozeman, Montana, except for one son who lives on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada. Linda hopes that as this book reaches diverse audiences, in all walks of life, it will bring increased positivity and inspiration to the possibilities of connection--in moments with children, adults, themselves, and life itself.

Eric is President of A.D. Creative Group.

Jim Collins is an Architectural Illustrator, and an artist. He collaborated with Eric Finstad on the book cover, and he created the sketches throughout this book.