Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - Beethoven Lives Upstairs and a new season....

We have moved into a new season in our homeschool. A season in which my ten year old daughter wants to have more control over her education.  

I recently received Beethoven Lives Upstairs from http://www.paperbackswap.com , and it was here sitting on my scanner. Well, at least I thought it was. Went looking for it a few days ago, and it was gone. Here dd had taken it and has been reading it in her bedroom. My first reaction is to think “No! No! We were going to share that next month!” but I kept my mouth shut. J Well she came to me and asked if I have “that stuff you always write for books, you know, with the vocabulary words and stuff”, and asked me if she could “do” this book on her own! I told her I didn’t write a unit, but another lady did, and printed a unit from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/beethoven_lives_upstairs.htm out for her, with the printables. Well,  she decorated a folder for the printouts, looked up Austria in her Big Big World atlas, and filled out the worksheet. She said she is going to write a letter like Christoph, but she wants to write it to NASA to tell them it was mean to demote Pluto (long story – we are studying the solar system lol ). Yesterday, she made a timeline image and placed it in our family Book of History, and also filled out a notebook page about Beethoven. I noticed a stack of books on her bed, Stories of Great Composers, and a biography of Beethoven, as well as some others. She watched the movie Beethoven (about the dog) and has Heidi (she remembered the Alps) scheduled in for later. J This is really a big, big deal. She did ask me to read a Value Tales story about Beethoven to her, and help her find some music links on the net. Here are some other links we came across:

Coloring page of Beethoven:

http://www.freekidscoloring.com/images/famous-people-beethoven.pdf

Download free midi files of Beethoven's works:

http://www.keyboard-creations.co.uk/beethoven.htm  

Today we listened to Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, and the girls both imagined what he must have been thinking as he wrote the music - a walk through the woods, babbling brooks, a storm. You know, I was never one that got all that excited about classical music. But then again, I couldn't grab my mom's copy of Beethoven Lives Upstairs, run off to my room, and read an exciting living book about him. :-)