Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone takes Courage

It takes courage to step outside your comfort zone. It takes courage and guts to make a life changing decision. A life-changing choice is one where you want to make a change for the better. One where you realise that where you are at now is not where you want to be. One where you have hopes and dreams that you want to realise.  One where you know that staying on your current path won't lead you to happiness. It is easy to talk about but not do easy to do.

I had been talking about getting out of Auckland for years. My rent was rising, but my wages were not. Two thirds of my income went on rent. I was working  hard and I devoted myself to my classroom but I struggled to make my pay cheque last the fortnight, and often found myself stressing about how I was going to pay for petrol to get to work and back before payday. I didn't go out for dinner, never went to the mall, and did all my shopping at charity shops. But although I knew that my financial situation wouldn't change unless I moved out of Auckland, I stayed where I was. I loved working for the centre I was in, and my centre manager was my friend, fellow University classmate, confidante, mentor, cheerleader, and my biggest supporter. I loved going to work each day and after being in the workforce for 25 years, I know how rare it is to find a workplace and management team like this.

So I stayed in Auckland, happy at work but struggling to keep my head above water financially. I learnt to be grateful for small things, and to do things that gave me joy or made me feel happy. Things like going for a walk on a sunny day and finding a beautiful leaf or flower, or sitting outside watching the birds. Things like eating yummy food and having a friend over for dinner. Things like being creative in my craft room, making journals, making fairies, or simply colouring in. Things like playing banging out ancient African rhythms on my djembe, or practising my ukelele, teaching myself to read music and play my recorder or singing. Things like getting lost in a good book. Things that didn't require money or use precious petrol, meaning I would be able to get to work in the last few days before payday.

I was happy in every other sense, but had a deep feeling of despair at my financial situation and didn't know what to do. And then the house I was renting was put on the market and was sold. I had to move out, but there was a rather large problem. My rent had increased only very moderately in the 6 years I had been living there, while in that time house prices and rents had skyrocketed all over Auckland.

To get into another rental property, I needed $4,000-5,000 which I didn't have, just for the bond and letting fee, for a house I could barely afford. This was not a situation which I wanted to get into. I packed up the house and put everything in storage, and hired a campervan to live in for 6 weeks while I looked for a solution. My parents had just sold their house in Auckland and moved to Whanganui, and this gave me the impetus to finally move out of Auckland. I don't know if I would have had the courage to do move if my parents hadn't already done so. My parents are not afraid of uprooting and moving to a new place. We moved often when I was a child, including moving countries. I prefer the stability and security of staying in one place. I am the same with jobs. I have a history of staying in a workplace for 4-6 years before moving on.

I started looking for work in Whanganui. I was very particular - I didn't want to work in certain branded centres, while being primary trained meant I couldn't work in kindergartens. I wanted to work with the older children, and I wanted a centre that had above minimum ratios. There was only one teaching job advertised that met my requirements, and I applied. This was my one and only shot at finding work in Whanganui.

I find that whenever I start on the path to making a major life change, I wonder if I am doing the right thing. I am scared of what I don't know. I don't know what is in store for me or how it is going to turn out. And for me, taking risks is scary. It means I have to step way out of my comfort zone and act in faith. It terrifies me. But the consequences of not doing it terrifies me more. There are several things I do when faced with big decisions. I talk about it with friends whose opinions and advice I value. I research. I seek out people who have done what I want to do and talk to them and find out their experiences. I talk to trusted family members. I pray. I ask for guidance. I have faith that everything will work out fine, because it always does. When things are meant to be, somehow the stars all align and things fall into place. Which is exactly what happened with my move to Whanganui. I got the one job I applied for in Whanganui, and my boss in Auckland managed to fill my position the following week, which was never going to be an easy task. My leaving and start dates fitted in perfectly with when the campervan needed to be returned, which saved me from being homeless and on the streets, and my parents had a room available for me to stay in until I could find my own home in Whanganui.

• Not all life changing decisions are big ones. But they do require change. And that requires an acknowledgement that something isn't right in one's life and it requires a real desire to change. Change is not easy. Change is hard and it can be terrifying and uncomfortable, especially at first. A close friend of mine realised he had a drinking problem that was fast getting out of hand. When he decided to cut down his drinking, he didnt tell anyone because he was terrified he couldn't do it. He is an advocate of a Reduce Harm model, rather than abstinence. Instead of his usual 6 shots of vodka when he woke up in the morning, he began to wait until after he had driven his partner to work before drinking. The next day he waited until lunch time before drinking. Each day he made a small choice to reduce the amount he was drinking, and over the course of a few weeks he had made significant changes until he no longer had any desire to drink. He didn't believe that he could stop, but he knew that his drinking was killing him and his desire to live became greater than his desire to drink. He found hope, and hope helped him find the courage he needed to change.

I am inspired by people who have the courage to make changes in their life. It teaches me that change is valuable, essential and part of life. It keeps me humble. It keeps me always learning more. It keeps me aware that I have not yet reached my destination, not even close, and that perhaps I have stalled or even digressed a little. But that's ok - as long as I just keep dreaming, keep striving and keep enjoying the little things along the way.

Rock Painting

          

I am a member of a few rock painting groups on Facebook, and I love seeing all the creativity and variety of rocks on there. Some people are exceptionally talented. One of the children in my class paints rocks with her mum and hides them around the city for other people to find. She loves it, and she brought a rock in to hide at school, for the other children to find.

She inspired me to paint rocks for all the children in my class, and for each of my colleagues, as a farewell gift when I moved to another city. I needed to find a gift that would not cost much, or be too time consuming to create, as I needed 40 gifts. But I wanted it to be personal, and painted rocks met all my needs perfectly.

 I was living in a van at the time, and my companion and I would go and stay at a beach each weekend. One beach just out of Auckland, Kaiaua, was full of beautiful smooth stones, so I gathered up some stones to paint.

I started by painting a white base coat on each rock, followed by a second coat when they were dry.

I had a small paint tray with blobs of various coloured acrylic paints, cotton buds, and some matchsticks. I didn't have a paintbrush.

I painted a background colour on each stone. You can experiment with background colours, and use two complementary colours together, such as yellow and orange, or blue and green, to create an interesting background.

The easiest thing for me to paint using cottonbuds and matchsticks was dots.

At first I wasn't sure what I was doing but as I kept going I became more confident and started generating ideas for patterns and images.

The sunset was deceptively easy - the background was orange and yellow, and I used black paint for the foreground. You don't need a smooth line, so the cotton buds and matchsticks worked well.

If I wasn't happy with my rock, I wiped the paint off with a damp paper towel and started again.

On the backs of the rocks, I wanted to write whakatauki, or Maori proverbs. I realised that this was virtually impossible to fit on a small stone, so I found small phrases to fit, such as "Kia Maia - be brave and bold".

My favourite is the koru. I made several koru rocks, but made each one different.

I painted a rocket ship because some of the boys in my class love space and rocket ships.

You don't need to be creative or artistic to paint beautiful rocks. You just need to be willing to have a go and have fun.

For more of my craft posts and tutorials, please click on the link here.

Alphabet Activities

I have been trying to think of ways to engage children in learning letters of the alphabet through play. I wanted to create resources that would be engaging and that children could use by themselves without a teacher.

I have one girl in my class who is passionate about horses, and spends most of her day playing with the dinosaurs pretending they are horses. I wanted to support her alphabet knowledge through making a horse themed A-Z.

I found three pieces of A4 sized matboard, and taped them together using book tape (clear packaging tape would also be fine), along the long edges. The card had been painted with pink paint on one side, which didn't matter.

I wrote the letters of the alphabet, using both capital and lower case letters, on the three pieces of card using a marker pen, making sure to leave enough space for the pictures to fit on. I wanted to make it durable, so I covered the card with clear contact paper. It would still be fine without being covered, and the contact paper does create a glare under light.

The most time consuming part of this project was googling horse breeds from A-Z, and looking for photos of each breed.  I created a document for the photos, resized all the photos, printed it off and laminated them, and used a guillotine to cut out the photos.

I created a pocket at the back to put the pictures in, and put blutac on the back of the photos so they could get matched up to the initial letter.

While I had made this with one girl in mind, there were a number of children who also said they loved horses, and they all took turns looking at the horses and matching them up. (I helped them to identify the breeds until they became familiar with them). I noticed that children were not only matching letters, but also engaging in conversations about the different horses, and sharing what they knew about horses.

This A-Z can be adapted to any theme, and I am currently working on a train themed A-Z for my train enthusiasts.

I created another horse themed literacy resource, where children can match up letters to spell out words, using larger photos of the horses I had used in the A-Z. Underneath each photo I wrote the name of the horse breed.  I also printed out a sheet of letters that spelt out all the words, and laminated them and cut them up. Children then look for the matching letters to complete their word.

I have found that this is a good resource for developing early literacy skills in print, as children try to find letters that are the same, use their observation skills to discern differences, (eg. b and d); and it allows learning to occur about concepts of print such as spaces between words, as well as making sure letters are facing the right way and are not upside down! (directionality).

A very simple resource to make was the alphabet painted on stones.

To go with the stones, which were lower case, I cut sheets of acrylic felt up into rectangles, and used a toothpick and white acrylic paint to write capital letters on.

I went online and looked for an alphabet chart, laminated it and cut the pictures out. Pictures can be matched up with stones and felt letters.

For more teaching resources and ideas, please click on the link here.

Early Literacy

I am super passionate about literacy in early childhood. I saw Nathan Wallis give a talk a few weeks ago about brain development in the first thousand days and how critical those first thousand days are for success in life. Research shows that throughout the population, the eldest sibling is the one who is the highest qualified and earns the most money. And this is because the first baby had had so much more uninterrupted time and face to face interactions with mum. The brain is designed to grow according to what it perceives it will need for survival, and it is designed to interact and respond with a primary caregiver. When the second or third or fourth baby comes along, mum is juggling baby and older siblings, and the consecutive babies do not get the same amount of face to face interactions with mum.
The other thing he said was girls brains develop faster than boys. A girls brain is fully developed between ages 18-24. But a boys brain doesn't fully develop until age 26- 32.
This has quite a few implications on my role as an early childhood teacher and heightens the sense of responsibility I have to promote literacy throughout our day.

Talking to children, having face to face interactions with a caring adult, where infants and babies pick up on your visual cues, eyebrows, smiles - it doesn't matter what you say or sing to them, positive attentive interactions help to kickstart the higher brain and get it ready for higher learning. This means that as teachers, it is our responsibility to engage with young children constantly, talking, singing, listening, playing, questioning, telling stories, giving a running commentary of what the child is doing, to fill their wells so that later, their cup will runneth over.

Barbara Brann talks about the 5 domains, and we need to help children develop in all five domains as they are the foundations (or building blocks) of literacy. If we don't get the foundation skills right, then later on children will struggle with reading/writing because they are missing an essential skill.  The five domains are: Looking; Listening; Movement; Talking; Print.

Literacy is everywhere - it is where ever we are. I am going to share here some of my favourite ways to foster a love of literacy in my room - and it is so easy to do!


Singing
Singing brings joy to the soul. Scientific research has found that singing is one of the only activities that uses nearly every part of the brain. Unfortunately, I often see teachers who choose not to sing because they are not confident or don't think they are very good at singing. Singing should be fun, and as role models, we should be able to show children our lack of confidence but willingness to keep trying, learning and perseverance - this is powerful role modelling. It is powerful for children to see that we don't have all the answers, we don't know everything and we are learners too. And learning is not always easy. It means putting ourselves in a vulnerable position when we show others what we can't do.  I joined a choir to help me develop confidence in singing, as I was not a confident singer when I first began teaching. I have been singing in a choir for 6 years now, and I love it. It brings such joy to my soul, and lightens my spirit. On those evenings when I don't feel like going, it is cold and wet outside and I just want to stay home and I am tired - on those evenings I go, and I come home feeling uplifted and so very glad I went. Singing is fun and it is a joyful, essential part of my life now.

So... sing! Sing in the sandpit! I sing nursery rhymes such as "pat a cake" when children are making cakes in the sandpit. I sing "This is the way we sweep the floor" when I sweep up the leaves or the sand outside. Burst out into song whenever you feel like it or see a child doing something that reminds you of a nursery rhyme/playground rhyme. In the playground I often sing "London Bridge is falling down", and "Oranges and Lemons" - and now they organise these singing games themselves and sing it themselves. I sing London Bridge in the block corner when someone's bridge falls down. If children see us role modelling singing, they will do it too. And this builds up vocabulary, rhythm, rhyme, sentence structure; and children learn to hear and distinguish between sounds, pitch, and tone. If infants and young children are not exposed to singing, they will not pick up on hearing the differences of pitch and tone naturally and will find it much harder to learn later on.

Jump Rope... whether using a skipping rope held between two people for one child to jump over; or the teacher holding one end of the rope and swinging it around in a circle for children to jump over; or two people holding the ends of the rope low to the ground and wriggling it back and forth for children to jump over... this is a great opportunity to sing or chant jumping rhymes. I find that jumping rhymes have a really good, solid beat to them.

Some jumping rhymes I tend to use all the time are:
Mabel, Mabel, set the table. Do it as fast as you're able. Don't forget the salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard. Salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard.

A horse, a flea, and three blind mice. Sat on a kerbstone shooting dice. The horse he slipped and fell on the flea. The flea said, "Whoops, there's a horse on me!"

My mother said, I never should, play with the gypsys in the wood. If I did, she would say, naughty girl to disobey. Disobey, disobey, naughty girl to disobey.

This is one I made up for the wriggly worm game using a skipping rope low to the ground - this is easier for young children to jump over.
Jump over the wriggly worm, Yeeha! Jump over the wriggly worm, Yeeha! Jump over, jump over, jump over, jump over, jump over the wriggly worm!

If children are climbing on the dome, I like to sing "5 little monkeys sitting in a tree, teasing Mr Crocodile...", and then the children tend to make that into a game themselves with one person being a crocodile (or three crocodiles). Then we often end up with 7 monkeys on the dome, as more children want to come and play, so rather than the number of monkeys diminishing with each verse, it increases!

I have noticed when playing these singing games in the playground, that lots of children will stop what they are doing and come running over to join in. It helps to engage and include children who are not otherwise engaged or who don't have a friend to play with. It helps re-engage children who were previously just running around. A singing game will quickly increase from two children playing, to 12 children playing. Jump Rope often ends up with 9-15 children playing, all engaged and singing and waiting their turn. I am always pleasantly pleased at how keen children are to play singing games with me. For London Bridge, the children love to make up their own verses and think of creative ways to build London Bridge up and for it to fall down.

Rakau sticks are also great for singing waiata, and helps promote crossing the midline, and co-ordination.
Simple clapping games also promote crossing the midline and co-ordination.

Thinking and Learning Books
This is the project approach, and childrens thoughts and ideas and questions are written into a book, and they can add their own pictures, and photos as they investigate a particular topic.

Write down what children say and put it on the walls. I like making thought bubbles to write down children's thoughts, to display on the wall. Children start to see the link between speaking and writing, and that their own words are written down.

Matching Games

We had a pirate theme last month, and one of the games I created was a matching game. Not a game where you match up things that are the same, but match things that go together. This requires a little more thinking as children have to think about what goes together and why.
eg Canon and Canonball
Pirate and ships wheel
parrot and feather
telescope and stars
map and compass
treasure chest and gold
anchor and chain

Other ways I like to support literacy includes:
Card games

Board games

Reading books

Marbles (good for eye tracking)

Active story telling - where I tell the story and we all do the actions along with the story, to act it out. I do this with well known fairytales such as The 3 little Pigs; Goldilocks; Jack and the Beanstalk.

Memory Games - both card games and Kims Game, where I use objects and take one away.

Clipboards, paper and pencils in the sandpit

Clipboards, paper and pencils in the block corner


For more of my teaching resources and ideas, please click on the link here.

Felted Bookmarks

 These felted bookmarks make reading a pleasure, and were fun to make. They also make great gifts for readers.

 I was given a bag full of "accidentally felted" merino wool. My mum's friend was dying her wool green and it accidentally felted, creating long strips of pre-felted wool.

 It was a very large bag full of it, and I have been wondering how to use it. 

But one morning when playing around with ideas in my head in those moments before you fully awake, I thought I could make bookmarks with them.

I wet felted the strips using hot water, dishwashing liquid, bubble wrap and a sushi mat. It didn't take long to fully felt, because it was already partially felted.

I decided that I couldn't use acrylic felt to make flowers for merino bookmarks, so I also wet felted some coloured wool roving to create flat sheets for making embellishments.

Flat sheets of felt for embellishing the bookmarks.

 I also tried wet felting designs onto the merino strips during the felting process, which turned out quite well.

 Having a pile of little bookmarks to play with and decorate and embellish meant I could explore my beginning embroidery skills, and decorate with beads and flowers.

I used a large turquoise felt circle, a small yellow felt circle, and a bead, to create a flower for this bookmark.

These bookmarks are so easy and fun to make as there are no rules. You can cut out uneven circles, layer colours and different sizes on top of each other, and add beads. Play around with broken jewellery, buttons, and embroidery cottons. Have fun! 

They can also be turned into bracelets with the addition of a button and a loop of ribbon.

You can see all my other craft posts here.

Journal Making

It has been some time since I have made books. I tend to go through phases of craft making - I delve into one type of craft such as card making, and then move onto something else. But I spent a lovely weekend making little journals, in an effort to use up my excessive stash of paper, and got hooked on bookmaking again.

 This is a fantastic resource with pictures and clear instructions on how to make a whole variety of books, from simple booklets to albums, with a wide range of binding. It also offers inspiration and possibilities for what format books can take. This book taught me how to make photo albums and travel journals, which made wonderful Christmas gifts to family and friends.

 

After making some small journals, I began making larger journals, and even leather bound journals with several signatures.

 A leather bound journal.

 I began with making these little books. They were simply made from four rectangular sheets of paper folded in half for the insert, and a piece of card the same size.
I covered the card cover with decorative paper.
Fold the paper for the inside of the book in half.
Use a ruler and pencil to mark 3 dots, evenly spaced, for binding.
Using a push pin (or tack), make a hole with the pin through all 4 layers of the paper.

 Thread a needle with strong cotton. Start at the back and thread the cotton through the holes to bind the pages together.
Knot the ends of the cotton together at the back.

 Place the paper signature inside the journal cover. Glue the front and back pages of the signature to the inside of the cover.

 Use a push pin to push through the layers of the paper to create holes, ready for binding with needle and thread. Depending on the size of the paper, make 3-5 holes, to ensure stability and keep the pages secure.

 This journal was made in the same way, with a single cardboard cover, covered with decorative paper.

 This blue journal was made with slightly larger paper, and I needed to use two separate sheets of card cut to size for the front and back covers. The sheets of card were covered with decorative paper, and a strip of paper glued between the two covers to join them.

 The signature (the inside pages) were bound with needle and thread, and the front and back pages glued to the inside of the covers.

This was another journal made from two separate pieces of card for the front and back covers, and joined with a long strip of paper for the spine.

This leather bound journal had two signatures which were tied together, before gluing the page ends to the covers. A strip of leather was cut wide enough to allow for the two signatures, as well as for an overlap of the front and back covers. I used PVA glue which worked fine with the leather.

 

These little books were made from four heart shapes cut from card, and joined together with a split pin, or brad. The pages open up like a flower and close into a heart shape.

 

This raindrop book was an experiment. I created a raindrop shaped cover from two pieces of card with tape around the edge, to keep the book safe.
I created a raindrop template and cut it out on blue paper.
I made a hole on the top and bottom of each raindrop.
The front and back covers, which were made from dark blue card, were tied together on the side.
I threaded blue yarn between each raindrop to attach them together.
When you pick up the book, or hold it up, it is meant to look like raindrops falling.
The raindrops fold back up to fit inside the little pocket.

 

You can see all my other craft posts here.