Hunt for a Christmas pony

We have returned from spending Christmas Eve with family. The others are all asleep now and I have completed some last minute wrapping and preparations for tomorrow. When the children were young I used to enjoy devising treasure hunts for them to search for their Christmas gifts.

So now to put Sprite’s Christmas gifts in place.

Sprite will find a picture of a pony on her pin board with a ribbon leading to a small gift (too small to contain a real! pony!)
Inside the gift box she will find instructions to follow the ribbons.
One ribbon leads to a book “How to care for horses and ponies”
Another leads to her computer. On this she will find directions to http://innreach.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/a-silver-shadow-passes-by-artist-leslie-s-graves-me/ where she can see a beautiful drawing of a horse by my friend Leslie Graves in Ireland.

A fourth ribbon leads to the room  where her P Party was held. Here she will find her soft toy pony with a note in his mouth.

And when she goes out into the garden she will find ………

Sprite’s 2010 Christmas list

I have just been reading Dr Robyn Silverman’s article  Ack! I hate everything on my child’s wish list
http://www.drrobynsilverman.com/body-image/happy-holidays-i-hate-everything-on-my-childs-wishlist/

It gives some wise suggestions about how to evaluate the advisability (or not) of giving items on your child’s Christmas wishlist that you do not think are suitable and some strategies for selecting alternatives.

Coupled with Dr Michele Borba’s  advice teaching kids to be appreciative 
I thought I was equipped to deal with what could be an impossible Christmas wish list from Sprite!

But I was not prepared for her trying out the reverse psychology / guilt trip combination!

More Twitter Bird carols to sort

 

 Sprite has discovered that having once volunteered to help the Twitter birds sort, collate and compile their Christmas carol albums, they now have the expectation that she will continue and keep on arriving with barrow loads of cds.
No pressure, but they have to be ready for Christmas!

Twitter Bird Carollers

“I really like the tags now!” Sprite told me. “It was really easy to find all the blog posts about the Twitter birds by clicking on twitter birds in the wordle in the sidebar.”
“I asked the Twitter birds what carols they could recommend for the #gtstoogies open house and they said they were busy compiling two Christmas albums” Sprite said. 

The Twitter birds Christmas albums are :

The time for the singing of birds is come – The Twitter birds sing traditional Christmas carols

and Twelve Tweeters Tweeting  – which is an eclectic collection of Christmas songs

“But they were still working on compiling them and wanted me to help sort which carols should go in which album and they had lots of singles which did not have their titles on them and they wanted me to match the CD to the carol title.
I said I would get you to ask your readers to match them up! Sprite said. 

Here are the titles:

Rudolf the red nosed reindeer
Away in a manger
Hark, the herald angels sing
Frosty the snowman
Jingle bells
O little town of Bethlehem
We three kings of Orient are
Deck the halls with bows of holly
Let it snow
Angels we have heard on high
Little drummer boy
While shepherds watched their flocks by night
(I always thought it was While shepherds washed their socks by night -oh, and I am using the Christmas stocking from the mantlepiece to keep my toes warm by the way)

And here are the CDs – can you help me match them and decide which album they should go in, please?

“And then I had fun following the tags to revisit some of the things we have done,” Sprite said “and then I found a tag that said Island of Misfit Toys.  I found that tag on the dashboard. I asked Intellectual Dabrowski why it wasn’t in the list on the sidebar and he said that was because it had not been used often enough to be a ‘popular tag’ yet. He said that  the search bar is for finding terms that have only been used once or twice.
 Anyway the Island of Misfit Toys sounded really interesting; so I clicked on it and look what I found!
I love them! They are all just a bit different like me! I can’t wait to see the film at the #gtstoogies open house!”

Tags

As you can see I have been very busy adding a wordle type tag cloud to Sprite’s Site blog  sidebar and tags to the posts to help readers locate posts on specific topics. I am working backwards and I have tagged almost half of the posts.

It reminds me of when I used to have to put name tags on piles of school uniform and stationery items just prior to the start of a school year.

And it reminded me that the children did not like tags on their clothes because they said they were scratchy!

It also reminded me of our first encounter with Sensual Dabrowski when we only knew him as one of the Black dogs.

And sure enough, Sprite and Sensual Dabrowski were not happy about the tags on the blog!

“It makes us feel really itchy!” Sprite complained.

I decided that this time it  was not an actual problem which I needed to remedy by cutting out the tags. It was more a problem of idea value of the word ‘tag’ and could be remedied by diverting Sprite’s and Sensual ‘s attention away from the offending term and demonstrating their value as  blog entry signposts.  

“Please could you talk to the Twitter birds about which carols and songs we can sing at the #gtstoogies open house tomorrow?” I asked.

#gtstoogies open house

The #gtchat sessions are on holiday until the new year but the #gtstoogies will have an open house where folks can drop in for some festive food and chat.

In the Deborah Mersino virtual theatre ‘Where the wild things are’ and ‘Rudolf the Rednose Reindeer’ (which includes The Island of Misfit Toys) will be screening.

Group Christmas Picture

While we had everyone assembled we took the opportunity to get a  picture for inclusion in a greeting card .

The Twitter Birds perform a Nativity Play

The Dabrowski Dogs go to the theatre

 

As a reward for their patience with the group picture project  the Dabrowski Dogs will be attending the screening of The Incredibles at The Deborah Mersino Virtual Theatre after #gtchat this week.
Intellectual has already read the discussion notes available from the Film Discussions Series page on Gifted Resources website at http://www.giftedresources.org/gr/films.htm and is eager to point out the archetypes and analogies .
Sensual is having difficulties with getting settled comfortably in his seat.
Emotional is getting upset about the family being put in a position where they felt they had to hide their abilities.
Imaginational is imagining what he would do if he were Dash.
And PsychoMotor was enjoying using the seat as a trampoline until one of the springs popped out!

Group Picture – Take 2

We did it! We managed to get a group picture! You need to click on the picture to see it enlarged.