Thursday, November 30, 2006

Dad's Chill Out

I’ve just got back from a narrow-boat trip on Birmingham canals organised by Sure Start. I was invited as I am part of a dad’s group that chill out at our local Family Centre every Thursday. I didn’t get to the group last week but I understand that they’ve started to renovate an old piano. Now Callie is full time at nursery I missed her coming along on the trip and I’m sure some of the others did too. But never mind, today Callie is having fun on an adventure with the Nursery in Wonderland in Telford.

At last I managed to catch up with Matt at Sure Start and get my certificate from the positive parenting course that I completed before half term with the dad’s group. The point of the course was to discuss some practical methods of behaviour management of toddlers. It was a very good six week course talking about ways of building good relationships in our family, not alienating or harming our children yet at the same time not letting them run riot.

I’m looking forward to seeing the group again next week. Now, I wonder if they remembered to buy the playing cards and poker chips?

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Thursday, November 16, 2006

Family Service

Sorry not to have posted to this blog for a while but it’s been eyes down working on preparation for college – lots of PowerPoint presentations, gapped handouts and activities as well as preparing for the Family Service at church. College preparation never ends but the Family Service is now over and it went well.

A Family Service simply means that rather than going to Sunday school, the kids will be in and maybe take part, so it needs to keep their attention. Continuing our series in Nehemiah, Nettes & I were given some passages in the middle of the book full of names. So how did we manage it?

Of course everything was on PowerPoint but I think the key was an edited paraphrase come commentary that was performed by three readers alternating lines. This was split into a few very short sections that were interspersed with exhortations, songs and a couple of activities.

One activity was based around Operation Christmas Child which we as a church are supporting and another involved making a family tree of the church. Very simply people wrote names of someone who had influenced them in their spiritually journey and stuck the leaves on a painting of a tree as a representation of our spiritual genealogy. A very moving experience.

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