Music Class

Brenda today asked me to play a Christmas carol on the bells with her. I transposed a basic form of Santa Clause is Coming to Town into the Bell numbers and we played it a couple times. BUT there was supposed to be an A#(number 6# on the bells). I didn't feel like getting the # bells out so we just played a B instead. She didn't seem to notice or at least she didn't say anything about it. Next she excitedly asked me to put it into letters so she could play it on the piano. I did, except this time I put the A# in and asked explained to her what that was and how to use it. She practiced her new music on the piano. Later in the day she asked me write out another Christmas song for bells. I did but she felt like it was too hard for her and she wanted to go back to the one she was working on. Imediate gradification. How could I not relate? We played Santa Clause is Coming to Town again. The girl noticed that the B didn't sound right and told me that she had the wrong bell. I had to go into the handbell bag and get out the A# for her. Just thought it was a funny story. She has learned Santa Clause is Coming to Town. She had a blast learning it. She doesn't read music on the piano. But I put letter stickers on the piano and I write the letters out. She decides how long to make a note based on what she knows sounds right. She only wants to play songs she knows anyway. I am perfectly happy with this learning and she is having so much fun. So now that I have said all this read on...

I saw a post recently about a homeschooler family that won an award for doing this really great project. Many people posted in to congradulate the children and family. It sounded really cool. I was impressed. I am often impressed and excited for children who are homeschoolers and get recognized for the wonderful things that they do. It is a big deal. Yet when I saw the post (which I saw before our music and bells fun) in the back of my head, I thought about how my kids just want to play. They don't seem to enjoy doing schooly things, even in what feels to me to be unschooly ways. I opted out of the Geography fair, biography fair, and maybe even the science fair this year, because my kids just have no interest in doing a project. In past years, it was me doing most of the work, and the kids gluing things that I cut out and put together onto a board. I don't know if they were learning a thing. I fear that left to their own devices they just want to play. Even as Brenda enjoys to read at night and learn small blurts of music, I am overly aware of the times that she is just having a good time playing with friends. I start to feel for a moment that my kids are falling behind. That they are not getting all the best opportunities. They don't have the same push behind them of loving motivation. Then I remember Brenda crying while trying to practice her cello. I remember all the work that I put into teaching the kids things, and all the work they put into not learning those same things. And I see how easily Brenda learned the tune on both bells and piano. I am softened by the thought that we can learn geography without a rushed fair project. We have done many science projects this year, without a fair. And some I did myself. The girls got interested after it was put together. It is ok. They are doing just fine.