The ebbs and flows of a homeschooling year has become very predictable. We are motivated, stay on topic, and get things done until about the middle of November. Then we start to slack off, sleep in, put things off,...re-prioritize... I think it has something to do with the weather. I don't think it even got light yesterday-at least it didn't feel like it! According to the National Weather Service, we had over 2 inches of rain yesterday!
I also start thinking about baking sweets...there is nothing like home
made sweet treats when it is pouring down rain outside and there is a
roaring fire inside. I really have to distract myself from the sweets,
so I took Lula for a walk down to the pond yesterday. She doesn't
remember trees, so she leaned way, way back in my arms for a good look!
The other problem with this time of year, the rain, the slacking, is not being able to send the kids outside to play. I guess I could. I just asked IJ if he wanted to go out and swim in the giant puddle forming in the pasture! And weekends can be very long with six kids trapped inside. So they've returned to video games...blech! The one video game they can play during school time is
Piano Wizard. It counts as music education, but it feels like a video game. I wrote about it
here, but now I've received Piano Wizard Academy from the school district! The academy level includes teaching DVDs and the sheet music for the songs on the game.
So now that the kids are familiar with the songs and keyboard, they are ready to learn some theory. This morning I started with note names: I drew a whole note and a half note and named them. Then I drew a quarter note and asked if anyone could guess its name. Then the eighth note...and because they are jokers and math enthusiasts, they asked if there was a sixteenth note....and a thirty-second note...all the way to 128th! Following the "Active Learning" method of education, I asked, "What does it all mean? What's the big deal with the fractions? What are they fractions of?" Why, they are a fraction of a measurement of time-and that is how they learned about measures. I asked how many 128th notes would be in one measure and how fast they would have to play them. Their faces were so funny when they thought of that! Then I asked how long a measure was, which lead into time signatures. Weeks and weeks of theory condensed into one short lesson that they understood right away. Music is supposed to help people learn math, but I think today that math helped my kids learn music! I tried teaching them theory when they were younger, but we experienced information overload and had to stop.
I would not be able to have a candid discussion about music theory with my kids if it hadn't been for my years of piano music lessons and the years and years I spent in choir. I am very thankful I had the opportunities I had (but I'm still glad I quit piano lessons when I was ten years old). Mark and I really want our kids to not only understand the mechanics of playing music (something I'm good at), but also understand and love music (the way Mark does).
***And on a funny note (pun intended), Ian and Shane looked at the cover of the sheet music book, saw a picture of a little girl playing one of the video game songs, and was able to identify the song. "Look, she's playing Beethoven!" Ian said. "How do you know?" I asked. "I read the screen-it says it right here..." I quickly cover the label and ask, "Okay, which song?" Shane took one look at the arrangement of the flying objects and proclaimed, "Fur Elise." Can you say Rain Man?
