Project Fridays

This school year has been so busy that I have not taken the time to write blog posts as often as I have wanted. We have been busily working through spelling lists, learning multiple digit addition and multiplication, memorizing parts of speech, practicing the piano, learning to swim, dancing, tumbling, and so on. Most Fridays, however, we take a break from our day-to-day assignments and work on a project together.

In January, after we finished reading My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, I gave Hannah and Ben each a box, set out the craft supplies, and told them to make a shadowbox based on the book. Both kids ended up making a model of Sam Gribley's woods and his home in the tree trunk, so I took advantage of that to teach them a little about habitats. On each side of the box, they glued a piece of card stock and labeled them with the title of the book, "Sam Gribley's Habitat," and the different aspects of his habitat: food, water, and shelter. Then, under those headings, they listed ways that Sam was able to obtain those things in the woods. For example, he drank water from a fresh spring, he hunted for animals with his falcon and ate edible plants, and he created a home in a hollow tree. The finished projects are lovely!

On the Friday before the Super Bowl, we dedicated the entire day to football-related activities. I found an amazing free resource on the website for the Pro Football Hall of Fame and combined with with another packet I got as a freebie from Currclick. I printed out a ton of pages, punched holes in them, and put them in folders for each kid. We began the day by bundling up and heading out to a nearby sports field, where we had a punt, pass, and kick contest, raced through various football drills, and performed an experiment to figure out why a football has its shape, instead of being perfectly round. Back at home, they learned about Roman Numerals (since that is how they label Super Bowls), did some football-themed math, read and wrote poems about football, learned about the first African American inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, discovered how to read nutrition labels to eat a healthy diet (like a good athlete should!), and even designed their own football team mascots, pennants, and jerseys!

Also, in February, we had the opportunity for an amazing project on the planets. Now, as a family, we enjoy listening to classical music, and one of our favorites is The Planets by Holst. Josh discovered that the Springfield Symphony would be putting on a show called "Out of This World," featuring a live performance of The Planets, lovely NASA images from space, and dramatic presentations by an astronomy professor and an acting troupe. In preparation, we listened to the music several times and talked about the names of each planet and how the origins of those names inspired the songs. I also found a free space lapbook at www.homeschoolshare.com, and I used portions of that and our Children's Atlas of the Universe to put together a wonderful project on the planets. Additionally, I used the student guide provided by the symphony and resources from our Galloping the Globe study of Italy (which includes a section on space because Galileo was from Italy). I was out of town with the youth group on the evening of the show, but despite the two-hour drive each way, Josh and his mom took the kids to the performance, and they loved it! In fact, Becca announced on the way home that it was "better than Chuck E. Cheese's!"

We have had so much fun with our "Project Fridays" so far this school year. I believe that the kids have learned more from them than anything they have learned out of a text book. Even though I have to work a little harder to fit all of their other school work into only four days each week, I am certain that we will continue with Project Fridays for a long time!

A Passion for Piano

This summer, we sadly learned that our piano teacher had gotten a job with a local school district and would not offer lessons any longer. Though the kids enjoyed piano, I had to fight with them nearly every day to get them to practice, and I decided to wait a while before pursuing it again. I worried that I might kill their love for music by forcing practice before they were ready. On the other hand, I also wanted them to learn the discipline of music, a skill they would eventually appreciate, especially if they decide to pursue music as a vocation some day.

Throughout the fall, the kids continued to practice their old songs and pick out new songs, so this winter, I decided to attempt lessons for both kids again. This time, a friend of ours agreed to provide lessons in our home for a reasonable price, which worked out much better for us with nap schedules and schoolwork and my broken leg.

Initially, the kids still resisted practicing, but I built regular practice time into our school schedule, and they enjoyed taking a break from normal school work to practice for a while. Plus, the piano teacher allowed the kids to choose prizes from her prize box whenever they practiced consistently that week, which provided some extra motivation. Ultimately, however, making lovely music on the piano became their motivation.

First, the piano teacher introduced a new curriculum, one that focuses on recognizing intervals and training the ear, rather than simply learning the notes. Ben definitely excels in this area. He can sing, "This is middle C," and actually hit the correct note from memory most of the time. Like Ben, Hannah can also pick many songs out by ear, but cannot yet find middle C without playing the note on the piano first. Of course, even I cannot do that well...

I think their greatest motivation, however, came when I began taking piano lessons, too. Both kids enjoy picking out songs from my piano book, because many of them are "real" songs and not just made-up songs for kids. Hannah especially likes my piano book, because her hands are big enough to play the full chords correctly. She practices and practices, playing each hand separately and then putting them together, and she can now play nearly all of the songs that I can play. In fact, she is probably only a lesson or two behind me. At this point, I would guess that she plays the piano for an hour or two each day, instead of the 15-20 minutes required by her teacher. My biggest challenge is getting her to stop playing and allow anyone else to have a turn!

As I have written previously, I love having a house filled with music. We often have music playing in the background while we do school work, and the kids love listening to music in the car. Some days, Josh pulls out his guitar, and we all sing praise songs, while the kids dance around the room. I have often considered Ben my musical child, but, more accurately, we are a musical family. Ben may have an amazing voice, but Hannah excels at piano, and Becca lives to dance. At the very least, all of our lives would be much less wonderful without music providing a lovely soundtrack to our days.

Bedtime Dance Party

A few nights ago, the kids were getting ready for bed, when I noticed Ben's t-shirt - a sky blue shirt with a dark blue graphic of an electric guitar and the parts of the guitar carefully labeled.

Now, Ben is a very physically affectionate child who loves being touched. "Hey, Ben," I called, "Come here for a second!"

Ben wiggled across the room to me. (The kids get very silly at bedtime.) "What, Mama?" he replied.

"I just got the urge to play the guitar," I told him, scooping him up in my arms, holding him sideways across my body, and "strumming" the guitar on his shirt.

Of course, as I intended, this tickled him very much. Through peals of laughter, he yelled, "Stop! Stop! Please, stop!"

I plopped him down on the carpet, laughing. "OK, Ben," I said. Flashing me a silly grin, he simply said, "Do it again!"

This game went on for several minutes, before we both felt too tired to continue. As I helped him out of his t-shirt and into his pajamas, Ben began asking me question after question about electric guitars. Josh plays his acoustic guitar most of the time, especially at home, so Ben knows very little about the electric guitar. I read him all of the parts labeled on his shirt and tried to explain how to play the guitar and what the various knobs and bars do. However, I know very little about electric guitars as well, since I do not enjoy the noise and distortion that typically accompanies an electric guitar. At this point, Daddy enters the story...

Josh came up right around the time I finished tickling Ben. As he heard me faltering for words in answering Ben, he tried to explain a few things as well. Then, he said, "You know..." and glanced at me with a sly look in his eye, "this would be a lot easier to show you than tell you." He added, seeing the pleading, it's-really-past-their-bedtime look in my eyes, "Just a few minutes... really..."

I finished getting the kids ready for bed, while Josh set up his electric guitar and amp in the living room. Then, in their pajamas (and Becca in her sunglasses), the three kids hurried downstairs for a bedtime dance party. They love to dance!

Josh played his guitar for quite a while, much longer than the few minutes he predicted, but I did not mind because we were having so much fun.

Becca always dances with full abandon, but she did pause occasionally to adjust her stylish shades.

Hannah danced with her favorite stuffed animal, Puppy, whom she had dressed in appropriate attire for the occasion.

Ben danced around for a bit, before discovering the pedal Josh uses to adjust the sound while playing. Anything electronic captures his attention at least as much as anything musical.

Finally, after at least half an hour of jamming and dancing, Ben revealed that he does, in fact, take after me in some ways...

"Turn it down, Daddy! Turn it off now! It's too loud!" he yelled, until we all decided that the kids needed to dance themselves back up the stairs and into their beds.

Although bedtime happened quite a bit later than normal that night, we all enjoyed the opportunity to have fun, laugh, and be silly together while listening to just the right amount of slightly-too-loud music. We'll have to do it again sometime!

A Music-Filled Life

As I write this, Ben is running around the room playing Vivaldi's Spring on a trumpet he fashioned out of a rolled-up paper taped together with stickers. Actually, all three kids love music, especially classical music. Hannah can identify many famous classical works just by hearing their rhythm tapped out on the floor, and Becca dances and sways to music like the ballerina she wishes she could be. They all enjoy singing and sing well for their age, but Ben seems to have a musical gift that he feels compelled to express.

We recently had our piano tuned for the first time in several years, and Ben has fallen in love with playing it. Sometimes he begs me to teach him, so he is learning fast and slow, loud and soft, the C Scale, some simple chords, letter names, very basic note reading, a few easy songs, and how to play with different fingers on different keys. I am impressed with how quickly he understands the concepts and memorizes songs I teach him. For example, I taught him "This Little Light of Mine" in about 10 minutes while we were waiting for church to start one day. He also self-corrects, recognizing when he hits a wrong note and trying again until he finds the one that sounds right.

Other times, he just plays, inventing his own songs that actually sound somewhat pretty and that vary based on his mood. Frequently, he ends on a "C," appearing to intrinsically understand that his song sounds resolved when he finishes with that note, as he is playing in a C Scale. He longs to play Josh's trumpet, and though he is capable of playing a note correctly, he lacks the breath support to play well. He also strums on the guitar we bought them, but he does not yet have the coordination or finger strength to play anything that sounds like a song. So, he keeps coming back to the piano, where he experiments and innovates and learns about music bit by bit as he plays.

My sweet, sensitive Ben always has a song in his heart and it just spills out of him all day long. Frequently, I can hear him singing as he plays... or when he is in the car or in his bed or almost anywhere else he goes! I occasionally have to ask him to stop singing in my ear while I am trying to explain something to him. I do not even think he realizes that he is singing sometimes. Though I feel annoyed at times, he reminds me very much of myself. I taught myself how to play basic piano as a kid and I walked around singing at all times. Several years ago, I even stumbled across a tape that I made when I was maybe seven years old. The whole tape was filled with songs that I created as I sang - full of random, silly lyrics that I sang so earnestly. I remember thinking as a child that my songs were just as good as the "real" songs that I learned in school and imagined that I would sing and write music professionally someday.

Even as a mom, music has woven through my life like the delightful choruses in a musical - entertaining and not entirely out of place, though a bit silly for "real life." Josh and I have made up dozens of songs for the kids, telling them how much we love them or how we are going to catch them and tickle them or even that they are making us grumpy and will face punishment if they do not change their behavior. Now that I think about it, I may have learned this somewhere else... I believe that my dad invented a silly song about eating ravioli that the kids still sing whenever I make it for lunch or dinner! So, how could Ben help singing all day long?

As I finish writing this journal, Ben has the mp3 player in the living room set to Pachelbel's Canon while he and Becca play and get into mischief. As much as I enjoy quiet at times, I love having a house filled with music and singing. And someday, I will look around my quiet, empty house and wish for the slightly discordant plinking of piano keys, the silly lyrics of made-up songs, and the happy laughter that comes from my children's precious, music-filled hearts. Hmmm... I think I could write a song about that!

A "Toad-ally" Tiring Day

We had to attend a six-hour class at church today, and the kids had a very long day in the child care program. They had a lot of fun, but were very tired by the time we went home. In light of this, we tried to make the evening fun for them as a reward for behaving so well all day.

Right after a short nap, we proclaimed "backwards night," which means that we have dinner for dessert and dessert for dinner. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner of cookies-and-cream ice cream/chocolate animal cracker sundaes, with macaroni and cheese for dessert, and then we took the kids outside to blow bubbles in the yard. After running and yelling and chasing bubbles for an hour, we finally dragged our exhausted family back inside.

Well, everyone came in except for Hannah and Josh, so I went back out to see what was taking them so long. Hannah immediately greeted me, squealing and jumping all around me. "Look what we found! Look what we found!" Josh held out his hands and handed me a lovely reddish-brown toad, all covered with grass. I put it in a large tupperware bowl and let the kids examine it for a little while before releasing him back into the yard.

Hannah drew a picture of him on Ben's magna-doodle. It actually was pretty good for a hastily drawn sketch! It's a side view, and I labeled the parts to make it more recognizable. It doesn't show up as well in a small photo.

We trudged upstairs for baths and bed, but the kids amazingly were not quite worn out yet. After Bible time, we started singing the song "Undignified," because we had been talking about David. Hannah and Ben yelled, "Again!" so Josh pulled out my guitar and we sang the song while the kids had their own version of a mosh pit in the middle of the room. After mandating a safer form of dancing, we proceeded to sing "Holy is the Lord," which is one of the kids' favorite songs. Hannah kept running over to me and saying things like, "I just thanked God for everything He made!" and "The earth really is full of His glory!" She was just so excited, it made my heart glad. We sang two more songs and then tucked three exhausted kids into their beds.

It was a "toad-ally" tiring day! Pardon the pun...