Messy Play Day

We had a messy play day at playgroup today, organised by my excellent friend Karen. 

Inside: Coloured rice with hidden objects, mystery boxes, collage, cereal & pasta for threading. 

Outside: water/ice play, throwing sponges at a target, painting with spray bottles, shaving foam on the windows, and a tub full of jelly. (did I miss anything?)

Then the excellent book Press Here, and making salt dough ornaments, which another mum organised. 

I wish I'd taken photos to show you all. So much fun to be had.

And F showed us all that crawling + water + jelly + shaving cream + dirt + dry grass = 1 really dirty baby :)

Mummy v Mum

SP has started calling us 'Mum' and 'Dad' recently. Not all the time, there's still a few 'Mummy's and 'Daddy's in there, but they're getting less frequent. 

Just another part of growing up I guess, but I thought we'd have a couple of years yet. 

When did your kids start calling you 'Mum' and 'Dad'? For our mums, when did we?

Melbourne Cup - yawn... Chinchilla Grandfather Clock - not a yawn,,,

Just in case you were living under a rock, or anywhere on the planet outside Australia, today was Melbourne Cup day.  "The day that stops a nation", all for a 3 minute horse race.  And frankly, it's boring.  Sure, I like the fact that work provides lunch for everyone, but what a yawn.

If you like horses and good horsemanship (used in the gender inclusive sense; horsewomanship just doesn't flow off the tongue nicely) then a much more interesting thing to look at is the sport of campdrafting.

I knew it existed, but didn't know any more than that until I saw this report on Landline recently.  The campdraft part starts around 34 minutes in.  (Side note, the program will be taken down from ABC iView on Saturday November 10th so if you're reading after that date, sorry.)

Basically you're on a horse.  But not in the Old Spice sense because you've got to work as a team, both horse and rider.  A mob of 8 or so cattle are released from a pen and the first task is to "cut out" or isolate one beast.  Once you've done this, they'll release a gate and your next task is to steer the beast through a course - two large loops around some markers then a final dash through a pair of trees.  It takes a skilled rider, a skilled horse, and even the best teams can come undone by a skittish or recalcitrant beast.

Much more exciting don't you think?  The Chinchilla Grandfather Clock is one of the biggest campdrafts in the country - yay for the place I called home for 6 years, even if it is just a trophy and not an actual grandfather clock.  But then, if it was a real clock, what would you do when you'd won it for the third time like this year's champion?

Yet another reason to take the kids to a real country show instead of the Ekka.

Memorising 1 Peter 2:4-10

This post is part of a series on memorising the whole book of 1 Peter. To see all the posts in the series, click here. 

Yep, week 3 and I'm falling behind already. But not as far as you might think - we had an organ service special sermon the other Sunday, so this is officially only a day late...

Here's 1 Peter 2:4-10, to 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty'. 

Teaching kids, continued

Four weeks ago I posted on my first time teaching Sunday School.  Today we finished the four actual lessons for this term, in a rather unusual arrangement the rest of term is going to be spent preparing the kids for their part in this year's Christmas carols.  In my case, it looks like I'll be honing the "epic", or perhaps "boss", ukelele ensemble.

With 400% more experience than last time (sounds much better that way, don't you think?) I wouldn't delete any of the observations from my first lesson, but I would add two more:

• Maintaining discipline/focus requires constant effort.
• The kids will surprise you with what they latch on to and what they don't.

My brother-in-law is a teacher and he says if you jump on things hard enough at the start of term, you can usually relax after a couple of weeks.  Unfortunately if you apply that to the once-a-week environment of Sunday School, it means you get to the second last week of term before the kids are actually consistently paying attention.

It's been an interesting stint and although I'm sorry not to be getting a full term of teaching, I think I'll be glad to get back to the comfort and familiarity of music ministry.  Although I must admit that during the break I've advanced one composition further than any others to date...