travelling day seven - in which we sing nursery rhymes in Russian

Today was our second day of training with the teachers in Karakol.  It was great to build on the relationships from yesterday, and continue working on some new skills.   The positive thing is that the teachers have no pre-conceived ideas of what should happen, so we can start from scratch and set up good practice.  They got really excited about seeing some students using picture symbols and signs on video, and were able to relate it to their situation.

Granny started the morning talking about positioning and stretching from a physio perspective, and she used our resident model baby for demonstrations.  He was very obliging.

We spent the rest of the conference day talking about how to make communication boards, choose vocabulary and modelling it for children.  We practised playing with toys and using simple language accompanied by pictures.  They took a while to warm up to playing, but when we started throwing a puppet around the room pretending it was a ball things loosened up.

I also decided that I could sing nursery rhymes in Russian with half an hour of preparation with the translator.  We did Old MacDonald, The Wheels on the Bus, and Twinkle Twinkle, demonstrating the song boards with picture symbols.  I am pretty sure they were laughing with me, not at me.  It helps being an extreme extrovert in these situations, and just going for it.

I also decided today to start learning some Krygyz words.  I know 10 words in Krygyz now.  It is a very different language to Russian.  I tried to keep using my ten words all day to practise.  You never know when you need your Krygyz words.  I plan to learn at least five a day while I am here. 

We managed some souvenir shopping after dinner at our translators' mother's house.  She makes slippers, hats, and accessories.  We spent up big.

Tomorrow is our last day of the conference - then we are off to the villages to see kids!  We have planned a quiz to see what they have learnt.  Hopefully something that they can use...

Onwards.