Image from e-Bay.

Boxing Day Memories - Play!

This is a blog entry in which I will sound especially old.  Today, I am looking out my window at the brown, green, and greyish white ground, wishing it were white.  Back in the sixties and seventies, I'd likely be tobogganing, using a new toboggan or maybe a new, plastic Slide a boggan.  We lived up the street from two toboggan hills and an outdoor skating rink.  We'd exhaust ourselves in the snow until our double layers of handmade woolen mittens were soaked and/or covered in little ice balls. (That we could suck on if we got thirsty.)  We'd then trudge home for hot chocolate made by heating milk and Hershey's chocolate syrup on the stove, poured into mugs with a couple of marshmallows for extra sugary, melty goodness. 

This would be in between rounds of playing whatever new game someone had got for Christmas that year - Kerplunk, Don't Break the Ice, Tip-it, Clue, Careers, Pick-up-Sticks,Scrabble, Monopoly, or any of our family favourite card games.  We were a big family, so having someone to play with was way easier than finding a quiet place to read.  Other annual hits would be Silly-Putty, until we wore it out from making copies of comics; a Slinky, until we bent it; and little wooden airplanes, until we blasted them into the wall too hard. 

The littler ones would be playing with a Fisher-Price house or castle. One of my sisters and I might be making dresses for our Barbies out of my dad's old socks or Kleenex and a hair bobble.  We might help my mom put a few pieces into her annual jigsaw puzzle. My brothers might be beating the crap out of each other with blow-up boxing gloves (Soccer-boppers?), a punching clown, or only in the ring with Battling Tops.  Somehow my parents managed to get us at least one awesome game or activity each year.  Whoever got it, shared whether he or she wanted to or not.  Once we started scrapping as the games unravelled, we would collect our now-dry mitts and snow pants from the various heating vents and be sent again to play outside.  Most Christmases in my memory were white and cold and filled with play. 

Christmas 1970

Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Training - 27 Hours of Love, Laughter, and Learning!


Last weekend I retook the Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Training Certification; not because I had to, but because I wanted to do it!  Three days of laughter, love, learning, and connecting to like-minded souls.  All of this is under the amazing tutelage of the remarkable Amanda McFayden.  

Practicing My Spiderwoman moves

Trying out some yoga "stations" on the yoga path

Demonstrating "The Spring" of the Yoga Gym

One, two, three, switch!

Two Headed Lizard!

Blindfolded Tightrope walk!

Rainbow Kids Yoga http://rainbowkidsyoga.net/index.html  was started in 2010 by Gopala Amir Yaffe.  There are now trainings being given all around the world, (even in Japan my dear Japanese colleagues!).  Amanda is the North American trainer.  We are lucky that she calls Newmarket home and also runs her own children’s yoga business locally  – Blisskids.   www.blisskids.ca

After this training, the newly certified RYK trainers have been emailing each other furiously and sharing how they’ve used their new skills.  The most common message so far though, is how Amanda’s bright love just shines out, while her enthusiasm for children and family yoga is contagious! Thanks to Core (yoga and Pilates) studio on Queen West for host.  Lisa, you were amazing. And thanks again, Amanda!

The November 2012 Toronto RKY Granduates taken by me!

Students Crossing Borders

I have been involved with the not-for-profit volunteer organization called Students Crossing Borders since 2009.  I was asked by my colleague, the late Lynn Caruso to join her in her work in Kingston, Jamaica.  SCB collaborates with some leaders in Riverton  City, Mustard Seed, and the Early Childhood Commission of Jamaica in supporting children and families in need. 

Our dear Lynn died on April 1st this year and is sorely missed.  We strive to carry on the work that Lynn has taken over from SCB founder, Fintan Kilbride.  We are in the midst of creating a board of directors.  Seneca College is also an important partner in this work. 

At this time I am currently recruiting early learning and care professionals who may be interested in coming on our next trip; May 4th to May 12th.  We will be helping children with special needs as well as collaboration with the early learning and care community in Kingston to hold a two-day ECE conference.  If you think you would be interested you could email me for more information:

ECE/Special Needs focus trip

May 4-12, 2013
Cost: $1,500.00 - includes all expenses (travel, food, simple accommodation, excursion)
Who?: ECE professionals, Early Interventionists, Children's Mental Health specialists, pediatric medical professionals, Early Literacy Specialists, Speech Pathologists, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, teachers, college/university professors, etc. 
Information Session:  Monday, November 26th, 155 Gordon Baker Rd. Toronto, ON
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm.  RSVP to me by email or call with questions.

A few pictures from last Spring's trip. 

"Break them one by one, gal and bwoy . . . "

 

Better late than never, more reflections on wondrous Japan.

Restaurants provide hot towels to wash yourself with before you eat. On hot days restaurants give you a chilled wet towel to wash yourself with before you eat. Thank you so much lovely Lucky Garden on Ikoma Mountain.  Quiet streets. 

Loud streets. Patient traffic. There are people whose job it is just to safely direct traffic (pedestrian, bike, and car) in and out of busy shopping centres, and around even small construction jobs.  So nice. (And they're not paying off-duty police officers some ridiculous amount as in Ontario.)

 

There are Shinto shrines on busy street corners.

 

  There is cold beer in vending machines - for about a dollar fifty.  Nice!  Clean toilets everywhere - even in the subway. White egrets in green rice paddies. Frogs, tree frogs. Crayfish.  Rice paddies between apartment buildings.

Hot springs and bathing.  Mountain paths with cicadas thrumming. Efficient, abundant, amazing transit. 

 

At the check-out, the delightful packing stations with newspaper, tape, string, etc. in grocery stores and 100 Yen shops (dollar stores). 

 Bowing. Tea.  Fresh, edible, affordable lunches at the convenience stores.  Small cool trucks.  Push-button service in restaurant.  No tipping.  Bicycles.  Bicycle parking under wisteria covered pergolas.  Manners.  The formal two-handed presenting and accepting of business cards.

  

Sleeping on tatami mats.

Young women's fun fashions.  Flower arranging.  Blue tile roofs. Grey tile roofs in the rain.

Gardens.  Big gardens, little gardens.  Planter gardens.

 Koi in blue and white ceramic bowls on doorsteps.  Heated toilet seats.  Toilets that clean and dry your bottom. Mountains.Stairways on the outsides of huge apartment buildings.

Temples. Bodhisattva.  (Thank you Steely Dan.) 

  Buddha.

 Wonderful people. People who love fun.  Kind and loving people. 

 

                                                         Shoe lockers in restaurants.

And the endless varieties of food.  Fish, salads, sea vegetables, noodles, dumplings, more fish. Raisins on pizza.  Octopus dumplings, your choice of sauce.  Daikon, burdock, bitter cucumber.  French pastries.  Japanese pizza.  Italian restaurants.  Japanese Beer.

Women-only subway cars in Osaka. 

 

Osaka! Parasols.Heat. Wearing a towel all day, every day because it is so hot and humid (37 C). "Love" hotels. Guest slippers.  Uniforms. And as your plane backs out of the gate, the people working on the runway bow to you.

Sayanara & good bye dear Japan.