what's the point

Today at work I have been thinking about pointing.  I have been to a couple of workshops this year which have talked about pointing being very important.

And it has clicked for me working with the kids at special school today

'The proto-declarative point
is when the attention is joint'

Hear me out on this - before your eyes glaze over and I go into an excited ramble about speech therapy related things.

That moment when a child (about 9 months old) starts to point at things is a turning point.  They are saying:
'check that out - it is so cool - I want to share how cool that thing is with you' - sharing an emotional experience with you and an object
or
'what is that - label it for me so I have a reference point for later' - vocabulary building
or
'I want that - hand it over - or you'll hear about it' - requesting

This moment in communication is so exciting.  Because the child is telling you something, and waiting for your response.  Some older kids, especially those with autism, are not at this joint attention pointing phase.  But now I know what I am looking for and wanting to achieve, I can practise it with them. 

Today I had a wonderful moment of pointing with a young girl.  And she totally got what I was saying and I totally understood what she was communicating.  It was very exciting.  Because I was looking for her point.

It also makes me think about how we can be 'pointers'.  We can be a pointer to Jesus, where people are not looking at us but at God.  Where the whole point of what we do is to send others in the right direction.  To say 'check this out, it is so great', or label it 'grace'.

Thanks for letting me point this out.

choir

Hallelujah!

I have just go home from choir rehearsal where we are singing the Hallelujah chorus by Handel (among other things).  It is a fine fine piece of music.  That Handel knew what he was doing.

In fact, he had a handle on it.

Anyway, I am really enjoying being part of it.  When I ducked out for a wee break in the middle of rehearsal and listened to it it sounded AMAZING.  And there are weeks of rehearsal left!

I am in the QPAC choir which I joined about two years ago.  I had to go and audition, which was one of the scariest things I had done for a long time.  I couldn't imagine what it would be like if auditioning was part of your daily work life, let's say, if you were an actor or a singer.  You would have to have guts of steel.  My 16 bar audition piece I sang was chosen by my daughters - 'We are Australian' - I think they were singing it at school at the time.  I went and found my way through the tunnel system that is the underbelly of QPAC.  The girl who sang before me was excellent, and I got a little overwhelmed and thought I was in the wrong place.  But I summoned up some courage, steeled myself and went in and sang 'we are one, but we are many....'.

They let me in.

So on Monday nights for the last two years I have learnt all sorts of choir techniques and been in some pretty good concerts.  I love the sound and the breathing and the team sportedness of it all and the way you can think about nothing else in your week because you are concentrating so hard on your voice and the music and where on earth am I in the score.  And I have made some good mates in the altos.

At last my incessant humming has a purpose.  Hallelujah.

swimming

I am about to go swimming with my girls.  We go every Sunday afternoon in a fitness quest for me and a skill improvement quest for them.

I swim laps.

They muck around in the shallow end pretending to do laps and practising handstands and fighting over the one pair of flippers and doing secret underwater messages and asking when are we getting out and hanging off the lane ropes and asking to go to the toilet (I mostly take them...sometimes it is too late... that's why there is chlorine) and I beg them to practise their swimming cause they will want the skills when they are older and they whinge a bit and under extreme duress do two laps then hang off my back while I am trying to finish my set of freestyle laps.

Then we have a spa.  Then some grooming in the change room.

Then when we get home we are all worn out and ready for bed.  Theoretically.

What are we gaining from swimming?  I am getting massive deltoid (shoulder) muscles.  The girls are honing their negotiation skills.

Ok....off we go.  Spot the slightly harassed woman with two shrieking girls in a gym near you... and swim on the other side of the pool.

dancing hair

My two girls do dancing.  Ballet and tap for one, jazz and tap for the other.  Mostly it is good - drop them off with their stuff, pick them up later - hopefully with more grace, poise and co-ordination.  If the constant performances in my loungeroom are anything to go by, I think they are learning something.

But it is concert month.  And I have to transform this hair

into this hair

It is not a task for the faint hearted.

But I do it.  My mum did it for me.  There was one particularly embarassing day when I was in grade three and I had a ballet concert that night, and I had to go to school with curlers in my hair and wear mum's scarf over the top of them.  And that was the day we met our pen pals from another school.  My pen pal took one look at his weirdly scarfed pen pal, and took off.  I don't blame him. He never wrote again.

Anyway, I do my girl's hair.  And probably say exactly the same phrases my mum used on me.  'You'll be right.' 'Pain is temporary'. 'Sit still and stop wriggling'.  'I've shaving it off' - actually only I probably just say that last one.

Concert practice week this week.  I need to be ready to mop up the meltdowns of the artistes!

black chickens

We mind two scrap disposal units.  Other people call them chickens, but I know them for what they really are.  Organic SDUs.

I feed them pretty much anything.  In this picture they are eating grain, but that is a rarity.  Mostly it is anything left over from cooking, or that has been lurking in the fridge or pantry too long.  Chicken purists would probably say that is not good for them.  They seem hale and hearty and their feathers are still shiny.

Their names are Dorothea and Theodora.  I don't know which one is which.  One lays eggs.  The other one is free loading.

This is their house.  It is sturdy, but there is plenty of room under for snakes and rats to lurk.  I'm sure they are there - just haven't seen one yet.

This is the inside of the house - plenty of shredded paper from work.  Speech therapy reports - this is your final resting place.  Church financial statements - put to a new use.  When the chooks finish with the paper I put it into our compost tumble bin - after a couple of weeks it is lovely compost for the garden.  Very environmental.
No egg yet today.  I read somewhere that they lay every 26 hours - so it is slightly different everyday.  Usually when Dorothea/Theodora is laying the neighbourhood hears about it.  I understand sweetheart.  Imagine passing a big egg out your butt everyday.

The chook corner.  One organic free range egg a day. And insanely efficient scrap disposal.

teaching RE to grade two

Since Easter this year I have had the pleasure of being a RE teacher for grade two at my local school.  I pack up my ipod (which has way too many Colin Buchanan songs on to be cool), a challenge (very happy with the minute-to-win-it game site for RE ideas - thanks Channel 7) and my Connect program and teach four classes a week. It is an amazing opportunity to talk about God in our classrooms.
After a quick student poll this morning the year's favourite RE activities have been:

- digging around in cold cooked spaghetti to find 'treasure' to illustrate King Josiah finding the book of law in the temple
- playing 'Gatekeeper' - a great game I made up where I get to be a grumpy gatekeeper who only lets in certain types of animals
- making sheep craft (really?  really???  are cotton wool sheep that good?  I thought I was being cheap..)
- playing the pedometer game where you shake your head to see how many clicks you can get with a pedometer strapped to a headband - I am sure I linked it into the lesson somehow

I will have to organise my Re ideas into some sort of categorising system.  That's what an organised person would do who wanted to remember them for another year.  Maybe.....

first blog

I have been thinking for a while I should start a blog.  And today, after putting down my mother's cat last night, I started.  Not that the passing of a 19 year old cat means I begin new tasks.  But I was thinking, life is too short to keep thinking about something.  Just get on with it.

And this photo of me looks very professional.  It was not my camera.  I had no make up on.  It was a quick snap done by someone who wanted a photo for the church directory.   Maybe I should have got out the shoulder pads and the big hair. I just thought I would put in a photo as this is my introductory blog.

I plan to write about my day to day stuff.  Parenting, pastoring, speech therapy, washing mountains, fitness attempts, addiction to food...  I am not a photographer.  Or a calm serene mother who bakes. And I don't know how to do all the design things on the blog yet.  Learning curve ahead.


Let's see where this blog takes us....