This week, the theme of the week for my sons class is clowns, so yesterday afternoon I went in to talk to them a little bit about the history of Clowning and do some clowning for them. I personally am more of a Jester than a clown, although to be awkward I refer to myself as a fool (yes I know thank you for that!) But like a Jester I tend not to paint my face (this is for 2 reasons,1. I am lazy 2. a painted face can be quite scary for little children). However my performances tie in a bit of clowning, a bit of illusion maybe some balloons etc. So yesterday I talked with them a little bit about the history of clowning and the different types of clowns. I showed them some of the props I use, including stilt trousers and several of my hats + wigs etc, did some juggling a couple of little magic tricks and then got a couple of them to come up and have a go at making balloon dogs. It all went very well, I had a great time and I think they did too, I finished up by making about 30 balloon dogs in around 20 mins so they all had one to take home while they tided up ready for story time and did some work sheets I had prepared getting them to think up their own clown names and design their own clown faces.
I have to say it was such good fun I think it is something o could offer more widely if I had the time to do it!
Email this postHad a meeting this morning working on my annual report for the APCM, at the end of the meeting I was asked that dreaded question…
What do you think are your strengths and weaknesses?
I thought for a minute and came up with these:-
Strengths: relationship building, evangelism/teaching
Weaknesses: Time management, administration
Of course there are others for both but these I would say I the main ones. I was very pleased that I was agreed with although another was added to the strengths list which was ‘role model’ which was cool. There was a point to this exercise though in that I am going to be given some support and help in improving these areas of weakness which I think will be really helpfully in enabling me to do my job better so fantastic meeting.
We have been sorting out some stuff at home recently, going through some of the boxes we still haven’t unpacked since we moved just over 2.5 years ago. I found some interesting bits of paper that I had forgotten about, I will share a few with you. The first was something we did during my first year at Bible collage, I thing it was latter in the year so we are talking around spring early summer 96. We did a where will you be in 10 years thing only we rote them about each other so here is a list of what the group thought I would be doing about now:-
In ten years time Simon will be:-
• Dr Simon Faulks (Very highly qualified)
• A Married Vicar in a band
• An organiser of music events and a reader in the CofE
• Long haired, with ear-rings, singing wherever he can get a gig
• The lead singer of a pop group called the “Plague” who will be world famous
• The next Martin Smith (I like this one but I wonder what they thought might have happened to him and also how I could be the next when I am actually older (if I remember correctly))
• A model for rainbow with George, Zippy and Bungle (where did that come from)
• Will still be wearing his hat (I do still wear it but not anywhere near as much as I used to, or should!)
• In a band called 3:16 and will play at gigs such as Living Water (Christian festival in Norfolk, I have done this one actually but I left the band to go to bible collage, this particular writer had been at the gig though!)
• After years of thought and preparation Simon will eventually dare to leave the house without wearing more than 12 colours on any garment. – Sadly I can still see him with a hat on.
I detect a bit of a theme here in that I am supposed to be in a band, I have to say I do wish I were but don’t really have the time at the moment, as for the hat, I still love my hats although at the time only had one a black Stetson style, I now have several hats many of which are quite wacky plus a brown Stetson leather style. As for the twelve colours I didn’t often wear that many colours together but yes I still do occasionally although in my defence it is now usually in the context of children’s work & clowning.
So if you found a similar piece of paper what would be on yours?
Well yesterday I updated to the new Blogger in Beta, it makes very little difference to you at this stage apart from it does mean that I can now start to use labels at the end of posts to help you find things on a similar subject. I probably won’t go through and add these to all the old posts as there are rather a lot but a few significant ones will probably be done at some stage. Other things may well be changing over the coming months but then I keep on talking about this and it hasn’t really happened yet so don’t hold your breath.
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