Been to the hairdresser's...

Is it just me, or is it just one of those things that your kind of brought up to do...??? Before you go on holiday you go get your hair done. Well I was feeling a bit reckless, so said to Lauren my hairdresser, go for it, do what you like, and now I have the most awesome colour - two different colours of copper and still some blonde, but it is in chunks - I love it, kind of fresh and funky. She also cut it a bit shorter and gave it a bit more shape - I'm getting used to this, haven't had my hair that short for a long time - and yeah, I know, doesn't really matter, 'cos it will grow. Apologies for the photo, I had to use the timer and I guess the light wasn't great, so have played around a bit with it. Still you get the general idea.

Vison versus sight

A few posts ago I said vision was a whole other subject - well here it is LOL! Sight is simply what we see. Vision is what the brain percieves we see. Often children who need support with vision cannot follow a ball across their midline, they rub their eyes often, they complain that things are hard, and or their eyes are sore, and they can be sensitive to light ('it's too bright out here'). If you think your child does this or you teach a child and you recognise they fit into this pattern, then I would recommend that they be referred to a behavioural optometrist. They will asses what the child actually sees - do they see saw when the word is was, or do they see cloudy writing. More and more children are getting picked up who have vision problems. Some are solved through work on exercises, many are solved through specialised lenses - (some children don't see particular colours and ink is made up of more than one colour so when reading the letters look unformed - pretty hard to read them then!).

Directionality

This is the inner awareness of understanding left and right, and concepts such as up and down, over and under, on top of, below, inside, outside etc. Once again we only learn these by doing - and you are doing these everyday as you chat to your kids ('put it on the table please'). Our language is such that the same word can have a different meaning depending on the context in which it is said, "sit down Sam", "sit up, Lucy". How this affects children's writing is this way..."now write the letter g, children, okay you start here, then you go down, and back up and then down under the line and back up" yep, you get it! I'm not going to give you ideas here, because I know you do this stuff everyday, but this little post lets you know just how relevant and important it is...