HOME, SWEET HOME!

So-home at last! What a wonderful holiday-so many ideas, images and memories competing for my attention! To my huge surprise (and probably due to the addition of some red wine!) I slept soundly on my way down to Singapore. Then 2 wonderful days for massage, rest and meetings and home to OZ. So sad to say goodbye to Jess and our wonderful time but we will be there again next year!

The JOLLY LEARNING conference was marvellous and will happen again next July. I shared highlights from the conference with my staff tonight and happy to report they all did a marvellous job without me. Our manager of educational programs, Danielle, has totally organised, innovated and wonderfully managed ICE while we were away. She has re-started our program for 3-5 year olds-ICE-CREAMS and today we planned the launch of JOLLY MUSIC on Saturday mornings. We are offering this JOLLY MUSIC to 5-8 year olds and very excited about this world-class, excellent music program. It is based on the Kodaly method and gives kids a great background in music and raises musical intelligence.

This Saturday we are beginning SPARKY BRAINS -a program for bright children in need of extra stimulation and challenge. I am so happy that we have finally found the time for this much asked for  program.

We are up to week 2 for our EQ4KIDZ cycle and I am reflecting on a conversation I have had with a colleague. We are so concerned that depression, sadness, anxiety about exams and tests are really rife amongst young people- here in OZ and also for our children in Singapore and the region. We need to ensure children learn practical strategies to increase resilience, increase confidence and learn to deal with strong feelings-especially those of anger, disappointment, frustration and sadness. They need to learn how to “flick a switch” to interrupt these negative tracks and help themselves to a slice of happiness! We DO teach them that negative feelings are natural and that we certainly cannot control all that happens to us-HOWEVER-we want them to know practical strategies to crawl out of the black pit. We will be offering training to ALL Aussie schools to implement EQ4KIDZ from early next year.

We ALL need these EQ enhancing strategies! To this end, we are resurrecting our EQ4BUSINESS and general EQ programs for adults.

If together we can save just one young person from depression and even worse, we will have achieved something worthwhile.

 

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