It's already November, so hard to believe. I just now finally feel like I'm in the swing of school and now the holidays are just around the corner. It seems the days, weeks and months go so much faster than I do. We had intended on finishing up this composer study a long time ago. All I can say is at least we are finished now.
Zippy chose Handel as the composer to study this time because my husband and the kids went to a Messiah performance at Benaroya Hall around Christmas time last year. Zippy enjoyed it so much, so she wanted to learn more about the composer, Handel. To learn about Handel's life, we read the book Handel at the Court of Kings (Great Musicians Series) by Opal Wheeler. It was a very interesting book. The part that seemed to get everybody's attention the most in the book was the page about Bach walking a long ways to meet Handel and then missing him by a matter of minutes. JD Boy felt so bad that he had tears in his eyes. He tried to figure out how to solve the problem, but I reminded him that they are both deceased at this point.
We also listened to the The Story Of Handel in Words and Music several times and enjoyed that very much. We have found that listening to this series in the car is a great way to learn about composers and their music.
We listened mostly to two albums of Handel music. One was of the Messiah and the other was Water Music. I also managed to find a few other Handel pieces on different CD's around the house. So we enjoyed immersing ourselves in Handel's music. I definitely have some favorite pieces and not so favorite, but they don't necessarily match with my kids. They enjoy uncommon pieces as well as the famous ones. Guess that means that they are definitely appreciating music.
The kids also did some notebook pages to go with this study. Even my three-year-old did one of these.
One of the things that has brought both my husband and I quite a bit of enjoyment is music. My husband plays the violin and I play the piano. We decided that having the skill to play an instrument was definitely something that we wanted to pass on to our children.
A couple of weeks ago our second child had his first music lesson. He's learning the violin. This week he was just so proud of the affirmation that he got from his teacher. He had complained a bit about the practicing during the week, but when the teacher was happy with his performance, his face beamed for the rest of the day. Yesterday, he was struggling with his new song, but he told me that now he is determined to practice even when it's hard. Move over Joshua Bell, your competition is on his way!
Our oldest has been making music for quite awhile. She started playing hymns and Christmas tunes by ear when she was four. When she was six, we got her a violin, and she started playing hymns and simple classical tunes by ear on her violin. The child exudes music. She walks through the living room and she cannot resist sitting at the piano and playing. I can't wait to see what she will become. I know she has a great future in music. (Okay, if I sound too much like an overly proud mom, forgive me. Sometimes I can't help myself.)
She also just had her first violin lesson and she is thrilled to finally be taking violin lessons. She is learning to turn music on a page into music from her violin and she's so happy and anxious to be able to sight read hymns. Recently she, along with her cousins and some friends, had the joy of participating in accompanying the singing at a church conference that we attended. She played everything by ear, but her goal for next year is to play from the hymnal. She was quite inspired by the experience.
Zippy has been taking piano lessons for about a year and a half. She has had a few privileges to bless others with her piano. She has played special music once for church and has played a few times at a retirement center that we go to once a month. She recently had her first recital. That was both exciting and nerve racking for her. She worked really hard to make sure that she had her songs memorized. (The music on the piano was left there by other students.) I was proud of her effort.
So much of the effort that I put into educating my kids is to give them the foundation so that they will be able to get into the occupation of their choice, but the time and money that I am putting into them learning music is my gift of enjoyment to them for the rest of their lives. I hope they will find as much joy in music as I have, even more. And I hope that their music will not only bless them, but will bless many others and ultimately point to Jesus.
It's that time of year when so many parents have the opportunity to smile as their children play in recitals and such. Well, I got my opportunity to smile this week. My daughter played her first special music for church. The only problem was that I wasn't present to hear her play. Sigh. I got sick and stayed home. But I'm still smiling, because I packed up the video camera and sent it with my husband, so now you can smile with me!
Please excuse the fact that when the boys saw that video camera come out that they immediately decided to climb all over their dad so they could SEE.
Art appreciation has always held the sound of dread to me. You see I had one of the worst experiences anyone could imagine in relation to this subject. When I was a college student, I put off art appreciation until the last, because I just didn't look forward to it. I was an engineering major and thought I was mostly interested in science. It was a required class however, so I enrolled to take art appreciation as my very last class during the summer after my senior year. I was already arranging for full time employment as an engineer come August, so I did need to finish that class and get my certificate.
I signed up for a one month class. I had a little time between Spring semester and the Summer session and I was working hard to earn some money. The day came for me to go to my class. It really wasn't a big deal. I'd been in college for four years and was pretty use to starting new classes. I had written down in my calendar the room number, time of class and the teacher's name, so I looked at it and marched off to my new class. When I got to the door however, I had a real shock. The room was locked. "That's funny," I murmered. I walked around in the art building trying to see if the class had been moved. Finally, I went to the student center and got a catalog of classes and looked up the class to see what I had written down wrong. Well, I had a made a huge mistake. I had written down the wrong month. It was July and the class had finished at the end of June. Horror! I might not be able to graduate.
I went to the chairman of the electrical engineering department and with the brightest red face you can imagine, I explained my predicament. He, of course, first had a hardy laugh. But then he took pitty on me and went to the dean of the college and asked if he would consider allowing me to take another class in place of art appreciation. I ended up taking a very interesting government class. I even got a nearly full refund for the art class, but only after explaining my situation to several more people, who thought I must be a brick shy of a load. Now you know though why I'm afraid of art appreciation. It gives me nightmares.
I never thought until recently about learning about art with my kids, other than learning how to make it. I have been following a few blogs of families that use the Charlotte Mason method in their homeschooling and I became interested in their art appreciation. They call it artist study. So, in spite of my fear of art appreciation, I asked my kids if they would like to learn about artists. They, of course, were thrilled. They both love to draw and want to learn about others who were artists of all types. I tried to think through how to start and I realized that I only knew a handful of names: Van Gogh, DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Picaso and Normal Rockwell (even though some would argue with me on the last one.) I thought we would start with Van Gogh, since I knew my dad (who should be an art teacher...and I wish would have taught me a little more. Ahem, Dad!) really likes Van Gogh and I knew that I could only think of one of his paintings that I could identify. I thought I could learn a lot about him. It wasn't to be though. (I'll get to eventually though.)
I told my daughter that I would let her choose which artist we would study and she had heard of an American female artist that she would rather learn about: Mary Cassatt. That is because my daughter has hopes that she'll be an American female artist someday. I already think she is an American female artist, but maybe I'm prejudiced. Anyway, Mary Cassatt it was and I enjoyed it too. I learned about somebody totally new and enjoyed a lot of her art too.
Zippy's notebook page that she did on Mary Cassatt.
I made this page. (I'm so proud of me! It's the first notebook page that I've ever made.) You can download it here. You can also download a black and white notebook page from this Cassatt Artist Study lens as well as some free coloring pages. We used this lens/website a lot during our study and it has all kinds of ideas on studying about Mary Cassatt, so check it out if you're interested in studying/learning about her.
We got a hold of a few books with Mary Cassatt's art and we just started looking at her paintings and drawings. We also read the preface out of a couple of them, because that told about her life. Even though she was an American, she spent most of her life in Paris soaking up life with the other Impressionist artists. Her favorite subjects were women and children.
One of the fun ways of learning something is doing it! I guess that's obvious. We've been learning about Colonial life and the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies. And we just finished a fun project the way that the Colonists did it. We made dipped candles with beeswax. Fun! Fun!
I purchased a kit of fun activities to do a long with our studies of early American life last fall, but we only recently got into the box and did one of the projects. This box was from Hands and Hearts. Unfortunately, they are not currently selling these kits, but hopefully sometime soon they'll be able to sell them again. However, this project isn't so hard to do yourself, if you can get the supplies needed. All that was needed was beeswax and a long candle wick and everything else is readily available in your home.
You just take an empty can and fill it about half full with warm water and then finish filling with beeswax. Then place the can in water in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer (not a hard boil).
Then you dip the wicks in the melted wax and then in a can of ice water and just keep going back and forth until you have candles.
This was a very fun project, but we all agreed that turning on a switch and even changing light bulbs periodically was a bit easier than this!
by Opal Wheeler. It was a very interesting book. The part that seemed to get everybody's attention the most in the book was the page about Bach walking a long ways to meet Handel and then missing him by a matter of minutes. JD Boy felt so bad that he had tears in his eyes. He tried to figure out how to solve the problem, but I reminded him that they are both deceased at this point.
several times and enjoyed that very much. We have found that listening to this series in the car is a great way to learn about composers and their music.
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