I woke up today with that lovely feeling of excitement-similar to Christmas morning when (especially as a kid) you would see a pillow case in the half light-all strangely shaped, with odd angles and enticing you too dive in to see what Santa had brought you! We are flying to London today and I never fail to LOVE this trip. Getting on close to midnight has an odd, exotic appeal -sort of naughty to stay up so late! Then I love the bit where we fly over the Middle East and you can sometimes see little circles of lights and know you are probably gazing at small wadi desert settlements. I love the strange, the different, the weird-the stuff that makes us think and stretches our minds.
I believe this feeling of excitement needs to be nurtured in children. We had a meeting with an educator interested in puchasing my programs and I was trying to tell her about the physical environment of our centre-how we use certain symbols and effects to get the kids enthralled when they arrived and excited about education. I love to watch kid’s eyes when we tell a new story, sing a funny song abour grammar etc-they shine and even kids who get bored easily are WITH us if we have a degree of surprise and excitement somewhere in the lesson. I have come to learn that children have a deep understanding of symbols and love the layers of mystery and meaning wrapped around these.
So much has happened on this Singapore trip! We have a number of people interested in our licence and it was so exciting to observe the children at Genius Learning Hub being taught with my lesson plans. The teachers followed the plans so well, adding in their own creative twists and the kids are doing so well. The methods are really starting to ripple out into the world.
So-journeys of all sort-educational, ones that cross the world, those that take us into uncharted areas of the mind-they all need this sense of mystery and excitement-the destination is important but the journey even more so!
