Role transition

It's the time of year when there are lots of new homeschooling parents trying to find their groove. Message boards are full of questions.

Q: "How do you make the transition from being mommy to being teacher?"

A: The dichotomy between parent and teacher is an artificial one borne of necessity when parents began delegating their children's education to others. To me it's like asking "how do I make the transition between being parent and wet nurse?" That question makes no sense if the two have always been part of the same role.

Sophie's Learning Plan 2008-9

Grade 5, I guess that would be. She's still 9 for almost 3 more months, but in BC she'd be in Grade 5 starting next week. Today we went to Panini Café for lunch and tossed around some ideas and wishes. At this point, here's what looks practical:

Biographical sketch / past learning successes and challenges / goals etc.
Sophie is a 9-year-old girl who lives just outside a rural village of 600 in the BC Interior. She has an older sister, a younger sister and an older brother and a close homeschooled friend who lives nearby and shares several of her interests. She enjoys playing the violin, working with animals, reading and being a self-directed learner of academics. She is remarkable for her broad range of interests and willingness to try new things. She is very skilled as a violinist and is finding that this ability is carrying over into a remarkable ability to self-teach on piano.

Sophie has recently been very successful in learning French. She expressed an interest in French language study early in the summer. She identified a particular curriculum resource that she would like and patiently reminded her parents until it was ordered. When it arrived, during a very busy part of the family's summer, she delved in with no guidance and independently utilized various resources available around the home since her parents were not available to help. She made excellent progress through the program, improving her French and her handwriting, and felt very successful in managing all this single-handedly. This is typical of her cheerful independence in systematic learning.

One of Sophie's learning challenges has been in the realm of her violin learning this past year. While she plays very well and has very good musical instincts, she is at a level where lots of careful analytical work is required as she practices. She often finds that the more she thinks carefully about her violin playing, the more difficult it gets for her to play with fluid confidence and showmanship. Turning on her intuitiveness and energy after the tricky intellectual detail work has been done is something that has not come naturally and she has had to learn how to do this at a conscious level. It has been a struggle but she is getting much better at not letting her thinking interfere with her music once it has served its use.

Sophie has a couple of discrete learning goals. She wants to compete a review of pre-algebraic math and move further ahead in her study of Algebra this year, and wants to achieve her yellow belt in Aikido.

Wellness
Sophie will continue with Aikido, a martial art that demands a lot of grace, co-ordination, strength and co-operation. She enjoys the congenial non-competitive nature of aikido and hopes to earn her first colour belt (yellow) this year.She would be very interested in gymnastics if we could find a way for her to participate in this, though it seems unlikely. She is not willing to travel to Nelson an extra day a week for this, but if there was something available on Tuesdays, or closer to home, she would be very interested. Sophie is keen to build on her swimming skills whenever the opportunity to swim in a pool presents itself. She will enjoy skating on the family's backyard rink this winter and will attend the community gym with her family on a semi-regular basis through the winter.

Languaging
Sophie is a passionate reader and enjoys listening to challenging novels of a variety of genres read aloud. Both these are daily activities. She would like to improve the fluidity, ease and speed of her cursive handwriting this year. She plans to complete the Getty-Dubay Level E workbook and will then continue with copywork in a journal where she will collect favourite poems. Sophie's spelling skills are very strong and will no doubt continue to improve with her copious reading. She may be interested in keeping a personal blog, and will try to contribute a paragraph or story to at least every second O4L report this year.

Humanities
Family travel through Canada's heartland and visits to museums and other sites of cultural importance in Western Canada will provide lots of opportunity for Sophie to develop interests in Canadian history and geography. Interests will be further developed using a variety of resources as appropriate, drawing on reference books, websites, documentaries and historical fiction. Sophie particularly enjoys travelogue-style documentaries as a way of learning about other cultures, and her elder sister's two months of travel to SouthEast Asia this winter will help her learn about the culture and geography of that region. She would also like to continue the family's hobby of geocaching this year, managing the GPS receiver herself as she gains experience.

Second Language
Sophie has developed a strong self-motivated interest in an academic approach to the French language this summer and would like to continue with this. She makes use of a French picture dictionary, a standard French-English dictionary and L'Art de Lire curriculum books and audio tracks. She would like to augment this learning with the more aural immersion-like approach offered by Rosetta Stone, as well as continuing with L'Art de Lire levels 2, 3 and 4. We will investigate the availability of appropriate French-language-learning podcasts.

Mathematics / Logic
Sophie's intermittent approach to math over the last year has resulted in a little less than her usual total retention of concepts from Grade 5, 6 and 7 level math. As a result, her enthusiasm for math has waned a little. She would like to win back her confidence and motivation, as she is very interested in moving ahead into deeper study of Algebra. She would like to do a brief review of fractions, decimals and percents, as well as improving her speed of recall of multiplication facts. She may do some of this as a prelude to diving into Algebra, but she may choose to do some of it concurrently. Resources will include Singapore Primary Math level 6 review exercises, AlgeTiles manipulatives, the Math in Minutes program for memorization, plus "Life of Fred Beginning Algebra" or an alternative algebra or Grade 8 math text.

Science
Sophie continues to be very interested in the academic study of biology. She would like to gradually read through Neil Campbell's "Biology: Concepts and Connections" college-level intro biology text, using it as an opportunity to learn to make summary notes and subsequently self-assessing using the CD-ROM assessment quizzes. She may also work through the RealScience4Kids Chemistry 1 program. In addition, viewing science-related documentaries, particular those pertaining to the natural world, will be a potent source of learning, as will her participation in caring for animals (rabbits, cat and laying hens at home, as well as small and large farm animals at our neighbours' homestead) and in family vegetable gardening.

Creativity
Sophie will continue to study violin, with weekly private lessons, biweekly group classes, biweekly orchestra rehearsals, biweekly Summit Strings (violin chamber ensemble) rehearsals and daily practicing. She will take part in a workshop in November designed to help young string players learn to work with an accompanist and will participate in a variety of performances of a solo and ensemble nature. She hopes to gradually move forward in Suzuki Violin Book 6 as the year goes on. She will continue to dabble in music theory study as her interests and inclinations dictate. She would like to be involved in a choir if the opportunity presents itself as it did last winter. She would like to continue self-teaching on piano, by working through the Alfred Primer 2B level. In terms of other creativity pursuits, she would like to continue to explore stop-motion animation using clay and alternative media, and she will continue to explore various arts and crafts. Currently her particular interests are in origami, folded fabric design and drawing.

Anger

In Buddhism anger is held to be one of the three roots of evil. Dr. Suzuki felt that anger was unnecessary and for a long time practiced not being angry. Our own family is a little shy on anger. The kids express hurt, but rarely anger. When they do, it's an anomaly and usually leads to a serious discussion about how things escalated that far. For a long time I thought that my inability to feel and express anger was a personal deficiency, that it meant I was a repressed person who couldn't deal with her own feelings. I'm not so sure now. Not all of my coping mechanisms are healthy, but I'm not sure anger is any healthier. What is clear, though, is that my kids are growing up in an environment where expressions of anger are very unusual.

Today Fiona and I went to Nelson to attend a Passport Clinic. One of the trickle-down repercussions of 9/11. Because the U.S. wants to be seen to be tightening border security, Canadians will soon need passports to cross the border in their cars, something half a million people do every day. And so there's been an incredible bottleneck in the passport application process. Waits of over 4 months were occurring with predictions of worse to come, though recent efforts like travelling Passport Clinics have cut the backlog.

But with Erin travelling at the end of December, we decided to use the Passport Clinic to be on the safe side and expedite the process as best we could. Fiona and I drove down to Nelson prepared to wait a few hours in line. As it turned out our arrival was well-timed and we had only an hour to wait on the street, and another 45 minutes inside.

It all went well. Except there was a man at the desk next to the one where we were being served who had waited the same 90 minutes as us. He was applying for a passport for his son, and not only was his signed Guarantor ineligible to be so according to the [new] clearly-stated rules, but his son had been the subject of an oft-revised custody agreement. The application clearly said that if this was the case the applicant was to bring "all documents" pertaining to the custody situation. He had brought nothing. And so he was angry. And while he did not explode with vicious language and vitriol, his anger was palpable. He raised his voice, he expressed loud incredulity, repeatedly proclaiming the procedure a "joke" and asking the clerk what the heck he was supposed to do now after spending almost two hours in a queue for nothing?

Fiona was not happy about overhearing this, about being within earshot of his anger. It probably didn't help that the man in question was an imposing physical presence as well. It was probably the most traumatic thing she's experienced in recent memory. And really, it was fairly benign in the grand scheme of things. If she hadn't been there I would have felt some sympathy for the clerk and then forgotten about the incident within the hour.

We talked a bit about how sometimes people feel things differently that we're used to, and sometimes they express their feelings in ways that sort of forget about other people's feelings. And I explained that I thought the clerk responded exactly the right way ... she was polite and firm and didn't get her back up and just reassured the man about what his options were.

So I think Fiona recovered. But is this a good thing, to raise children so far outside the realm of anger that they are traumatized by an irate man in a passport queue?

Fiona's Learning Plan, Grade Zero

Fiona, who really likes the idea of growing up, is thrilled that she'll have moved from "Grade Negative One" to "Grade Zero" effective next Tuesday. She'll also be officially and legally enrolled as a home-based learning with the SelfDesign program that my other kids have been part of for the past two or three years. And that means that unlike last year, this year's Learning Plan is for real. It will actually get typed up and submitted and will form part of her school record. Not that that's any big hairy deal. But still, she likes the idea that she's Official.

So we went out to a café today and talked about what she'd like to learn and how she'd like to learn it. She's in the thick of a lot of stuff already, so to be honest there weren't a lot of new ideas to talk about. But we had a nice time anyway. What follows is what I've typed up since as a distillation. You may notice that I'm very vague on her current capabilities. That's intentional. The SelfDesign staff and administration are on our side for sure, but the virtual paper trail we create is in large part for the government. The Ministry of Education inspects the school's records regularly. I figure that if Fiona's learning takes some unexpected new turn and she abandons all the various fast-tracks she's on, there's enough vagueness in this plan for me to say truthfully, at the end of the year "Fiona now reads capably at a second-to-third-grade level" and be telling the truth, yet I won't be giving away the fact that she hasn't made any tangible progress in reading in 9 months. Not that I expect that to happen, but I figure there's no point in giving more than is required away at the outset.

Biographical sketch / past learning successes and challenges / goals etc.
Fiona is 5 years old and the youngest of four siblings who live outside a rural village in the BC Interior. She loves math and music, and is very accomplished at both of these areas. She enjoys just about anything that anyone else expresses enthusiasm for. She finds success in most learning endeavours, but among her recent hard-won successes has been learning to sight-read music on the violin. This was something that came gradually and had up-and-down moments but she has realized lots of success over the long term.

Fiona doesn't really have many discrete learning goals at this point; what she really wants is to engage in lots of exciting learning processes. For instance she's looking forward to participating in a number of new activities this year and to continuing with the ongoing learning she's part of already. Any learning achievements she might make are really of secondary importance to her; she primarily enjoys "doing" learning.

She has a streak of perfectionism which occasionally rears its head, but she usually recovers her optimistic motivation quickly after a short break. She has already amassed a wealth of experience, thanks to her violin studies, at breaking complex learning down into manageable component steps and working diligently through them to mastery. There's no doubt that violin has presented many learning challenges, but Fiona copes with them with simple determination and matter-of-fact diligence, so they rarely seem like major hurdles. Learning tends to come quite easily to Fiona and due to her fairly obvious precocity in several areas, she has a strong self-image as a capable learner.

Wellness

Fiona hopes to participate in the Aikido for Young Children class that she was part of last spring. She is always an active girl, both indoors and out and will continue to enjoy a wide range of physical recreational pursuits. She is a beginning swimmer and wants to develop more confidence and ability whenever she has occasion to visit a pool. She hopes to improve her ice skating on the family's backyard rink this winter. She will continue to lead an active life both indoors and out, with access to a variety of equipment at home as well as at the community gym.

Languaging

Fiona recently acquired glasses for a high degree of far-sightedness and now finds reading much more enjoyable. She enjoys sharing reading aloud with her mother and will continue with that several times a week. She will read from a variety of materials at a range of levels in order to build her competence and confidence with printed text. As her fluency and comprehension improve she may begin to prefer independent silent reading because this offers her more flexibility and privacy, a fact she's recently discovered. She enjoys typing entries for a personal blog and has a new interest in spelling accuracy that is being aided by her use of a computer spell-checker. She wishes to improve her handwriting facility by working through an italic handwriting workbook. She enjoys listening to challenging novels from a variety of genres read aloud.

Humanities

Fiona will be taking part in an extended journey across Canada, from the mountains to the shield, largely by rail, and will be exploring some of the history and lore of the building of Canada's railroad. She is curious about world geography and will use a globe, maps and Google Earth to explore the relationship between the visible world and the symbolic world of maps. She will watch documentaries about travel, other cultures and history as her interests dictate.

Second Language

Fiona is very interested in learning more Japanese. She has learned some through her Aikido studies but would like to explore this further. Resources available include language CD's, introductory Rosetta Stone, manga kanji and kana handbooks and a Buddha Board for Japanese calligraphy practice. She is also curious about French and thinks she might learn a bit about the French language alongside her older sister Sophie.

Mathematics / Logic

Fiona is passionate about mathematics. To her, math is a delightful playground of logical ideas and puzzles. She will continue to enjoy exploring mathematical patterns, concepts and terminology through conversation and games. She also likes the systematic study of arithmetic and will make use of workbooks and guided discovery using manipulatives appropriate to her level. She would like to explore beginning algebra concepts using Borenson's Hands-On Equations.

Science

Fiona enjoys time outside, which at her home means time amongst the forest and wildlife. She helps care for the family laying hens, rabbits and cat and grows her own small garden each spring. She will continue to watch documentaries and particularly enjoys those such as the Planet Earth series that are about the natural world. She naturally encounters scientific principles throughout her daily life and enjoys conversations that spring from those encounters, helping her further explore ideas about how the physical and biological worlds work.

Creativity

Fiona will continue her Suzuki violin studies. She will have weekly lessons and a biweekly violin group class, and will practice at home daily. She'll be using her growing sight-reading skills in a seasonal string ensemble in the late fall and by participating in the simpler repertoire in the local community orchestra beginning in January. She will take part in a workshop in November designed to help young string players learn to work with an accompanist and will participate in a variety of performances of a solo and ensemble nature. She plans to begin studying piano formally in October. She enjoys a wide range of arts and crafts. She is particularly looking forward to doing more painting, origami and fibre arts.

Respect for authority

That's Noah with his viola master class teacher from SVI. It was important to him that he arrange photo-ops with his various favourite teachers from this summer. He really likes his teachers! As I've mentioned, Noah is often a favourite of teachers when he ends up in a group learning situation. He's diligent, focused, cheerful and hard-working, and his manner is sensitive and humble.

Once in a while someone asks "but if a kid doesn't go to school, how will he learn to listen to authority figures and obey rules?"

There are two types of responses I can give to this. The first response is the defensive one. I pull out photos like this one and explain how my kids get lots of experience in group situations and invariably their teachers love them. I point out that they behave beautifully in classes and have been able to sit quiet as mice through chamber music concerts since they were two. They get experience creating and obeying rules that are meaningful to them and their family, and they experience social rules when they're out and about in the real world, which is plenty. And that's all true, but the more I think about it, it sort of misses the truth about respect.

The second type of response is to critically examine the assumptions behind the question. I think there are some very mistaken assumptions there. The question is really more about obedience than respect. The assumption seems to be that respect is a behaviour which encompasses obedience and "doing what is expected", and that the only reason an adult in a position of authority would be respected is because the child had experience with obedient patterns of behaviour in a wide range of circumstances.

I don't believe respect is a behaviour that is learned through repeated practice. I believe that respect is a moral understanding that springs from empathy. In other words it comes from a a strongly-rooted set of moral values, not repetitive behaviour. And strongly grounded values are of course best learned through consistent caring teaching within the family ... rather than the rather random, capricious examples set in institutional settings. I believe that people who value others' feelings and who have guided experience with viewing the world from others' perspectives will naturally want to behave in a respectful manner. My children listen to their parents because their parents listen to them. My children behave well in classes, concerts, playgroups and meetings because they care about how their behaviour can support or undermine the experience and enjoyment of others. Yeah, okay, and it helps that they're too shy to do anything that would draw attention to themselves.

Flying Karamazov Sister

That chin-up bar is still being enjoyed as thoroughly as it was last spring. Fiona has discovered how to pump her legs and gain height in her swings. She's scant inches from hitting the ceiling with her toes.

Thoughts on growing up

Fiona likes the idea of growing up. She always looks forward to the next stage, to new levels of freedom, responsibility, competence, ability.

Earlier this week she said "I can't wait until I'm six. And until I'm seven."

"Why is that?"

"Because when I'm six I'll be able to play in orchestra. And when I'm seven I'll probably get out of my [toddler] car seat."

She's pretty much correct on both counts. She'll probably be able to join the community orchestra in early 2009 to play the one or two simplest pieces of repertoire. And we expect, given that she weighs maybe 33 lbs. now, that she'll be about 7 before she reaches the critical 40 lbs. and can move into a booster seat. She's not a large child. And she has always hit milestones in a funny order.

Stiffy

Sophie is an origami nut and has been for a long time. Fiona loves it too in her own novice way. So when I saw instructions somewhere for using fabric stiffener to turn fabric into a durable origami-like material for crafts, I knew this would be a hit. We ended up buying a book of instructions and project ideas, but really it's very easy and you can use almost any simple origami pattern.

First we paint the fabric with Stiffy. We use a rigid squeegee to remove the excess Stiffy. A credit card or ruler would work fine too. Then we hang the fabric to dry. When it's dry it's as stiff as cardstock and makes lovely sharp creases with a bone folder or even a thumbnail. We iron it to eliminate wrinkles, using a cloth over top to protect the iron. Then we cut out our origami squares, taking care to get nice 90-degree angles. Sophie made a box and lid today (photo below, box in progress).

Sides, bases and tops can be strengthened with cereal-box-board inserts. Loose edges can be tucked in and glued. Embellishments, divider inserts and contrasting liners can be added. We need to get to a craft store to pick up some ribbons and other findings. Goodness knows we have enough little scraps of fabric to keep us going for quite a while. We think that this year's hand-made Christmas tree decorations may be folded fabric stars.

I'm sure there are lots more possibilities waiting to be discovered...

Claymation

As you might have noticed, I've been spending a lot of time editing clips off the camcorder lately. One of the unexpected results of having the camcorder firewired to the computer has been a sudden interest in claymation amongst my younger kids. Sophie especially has taken to it with a vengeance over the past couple of days. So far the figures and sequences are simple, which means that she is really getting a chance to explore the possibilities of the technique itself without getting bogged down with too much complexity of sets, scenes, story-lines and such.

For those who are interested, she's using Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 which we bought a year ago bundled with Photoshop Elements for just over $100. I was really interested in getting Photoshop, but the bundle was a great deal for not much more, and Premiere has turned out to contain a wealth of possibilities and tools that are serving us well.



Here is Sophie's work of half an hour this morning. Very fun!

Ursine time of year

Bears are wandering through here again. We had a welcome respite from life with bears this spring, having experienced a lot fewer visits than usual. But they're back with a vengeance this fall. We picked all our fruit yesterday, though it wasn't quite ripe yet. Still the bears continue to visit. This guy wandered very close to the house at supper time and paused for a portrait. Chuck beaned him twice with pellets from the air rifle. Yesterday Noah nailed a larger brown bear at the apple tree. It would be nice if they got the message and stayed a little further from the house, at least during daylight while the kids are out and about.

Adult choir

Last year I posted a clip from the family choir that Allison directs at VSSM. Erin has usually done the Adult Choir, and this year Noah opted to join her. He had been quite inspired by listening to the local Community Choir's performance last spring and I had suggested that he might like to try the Adult Choir during the VSSM week to see whether four-part choral singing was enjoyable to him. I honestly expected him to change his mind once it got imminent but on the day VSSM began he was happy to register for choir. He ended up with a bit of a cold through the week but was still keen to sing. He was the youngest in the choir by a good bit but had the company of a friend and of his sister so it felt comfortable. And Allison is just amazing at how she works with the group, so encouraging and full of gentle humour, yet with a knack for bringing a group to a high musical level. This is just a short clip of "Minoi, Minoi," an a cappella song in Samoan. Noah is the little guy in the orange shirt. Erin is on the left, occasionally visible behind the swaying woman.



Now Noah would like to join the community choir. The director would like to have him, as she sang in the Adult Choir and was very impressed with his behaviour and ability, but is a little concerned about setting the precedent of accepting children (even Erin was turning 13 the year she joined). She's going to think about it. We'll see.

She also plays piano

Someday, she thinks, she'd like to focus on accompanying. I'm sure she'd be fabulous at it. She's actually been doing some simple accompanying of Book 1 & 2 Suzuki students since about the age of 8 and has always been a proper accompanist -- following and supporting her soloist rather than hammering through her own part. For now piano is sort of a hobby, something that gets squeezed around the corners of the violin & choral stuff she's more passionate about. Too bad she's so good at it ... people expect a certain drive and committment to it, something that's been in short supply lately. But during the VSSM week she did focus mostly on piano, and did some nice playing. Here's her performance of the Khatchaturian Toccata from the Friday piano recital.

On fish and ponds of varying proportions

An interesting question to ponder. Do your kids prefer to be big fish in small ponds, small fish in big ponds, or some other combination? How about you?

Erin is currently a very big fish in a very small pond. She enjoys this, but also finds herself very limited by it. There's the possibility of being a sort of medium fish in a big pond -- the challenge option, which would likely require living away from home. I'm speaking here of course of music, which is her all-consuming passion at this point. Not sure which she'll choose, and unfortunately I think she's really too young for such a decision, but it'll likely have to be made within a year or so.

Noah will definitely prefer to be a small fish in a big pond, though he's at least three or four years from having to find a bigger musical pond. As a violist he likes being in the midst of great things, but not the out-front player. It's the same in other areas; he'd rather be in an aikido class or soccer program where the others are working hard and taking it all seriously, but he likes to be in the top 25%, not the top 1%.

Sophie I'm not really sure. I think she's more a medium fish small pond kind of person. She's a dabbler who likes to try different things and do reasonably well but isn't driven to the kind of perfectionism that her older siblings are. But I feel like there's a shift in maturity that's getting ready to take root in her, and she may emerge with a new self-concept that changes all this. We'll see.

Fiona might turn out to be our big fish big pond kid. She's much more comfortable with the spotlight than the others and she is driven to achieve, as much as is possible for a five-year-old. Time will tell!

Their mother is more comfortable as a big fish in a small pond, but likes to be in the reeds near the bottom of the pond where only people who are really looking can see her bigness lurking there.

Everybody's solos

The truth is, I blog for my own selfish reasons, not to provide ideas, inspiration, counter-examples or entertainment for others. And so I will shamelessly post these videos of my children playing string solos as a sort of virtual scrapbook / home movie that I can look back on in future years. I've now been blogging for over 10 years. I wish I'd had digital video capability back at the beginning. Here's one solo from each of my kids on their stringed instruments.

Fiona is now almost ready to start Suzuki book 4 but at the SVI she performed a piece she learned quite a while ago, "Two Grenadiers" by Schumann from Book 2. It was a chance to enjoy playing different articulations, rhythms and musical feelings, and to exercise her vibrato and intonation skills.



Sophie's performance is from late last winter, the first movement of the Vivaldi a minor. It's a "golden oldie" for her (really the best kind of performance piece for young students, I think), but I especially like this performance because she managed to project confidence and energy when she played, a capacity which has waxed and waned over the past year.


Noah's Allemande is all about heart and musical sensitivity. Technically this piece is not a big challenge, but in terms of musical subtlety and sensitivity it will take as much as a student can give. Noah has so much in the way of natural musicality and I think that really shines in this solo performance of the Allemande from the Bach Solo Suite in G Major.


This is Erin's performance of the Bloch Nigun. She had polished this up last winter but unfortunately was not able to perform it accompanied until late this summer. It was nice to finally get the chance. It's not quite as polished in this performance as it was a few months ago, as she'd been working mostly on a couple of new concertos all summer long, but it was nice to have the piano.

Mendelssohn Quartet

It's just video after video around here lately, I know. There are probably a few more to come, but it won't go on like this for much longer; it's just that it's mostly during three weeks in August that my kids get the opportunity to perform in ensembles and with accompanists.

This week Erin was involved in the Chamber Music class at the Valhalla Intensive Performers' Program. For a couple of hours a day, teens meet in groups to rehearse assigned chamber music works. They are coached by a couple of different teachers each day for short stints and work independently for about half the time. The program has a nice collaborative, supportive atmosphere.

This is Erin's third year in the program. Last year she played piano instead of violin due to instrumentation challenges within the program -- the usual dearth of violists. This year by request she was back on violin. Her quartet (three teen girls plus Erin's teacher / coach playing viola) was given a simple Mozart movement on Monday to work on. The girls, it seems, were less inspired by the prospect of polishing up the Mozart than they were by the challenge offered by the Mendelssohn quartet movement they given were given on Tuesday as 'a reading exercise for fun.' On Wednesday they decided to focus on the Mendelssohn and discard the Mozart entirely. Thursday and Friday were devoted mostly to pre-performance and performance run-throughs, so they didn't actually get a whole lot of rehearsal time. There are some intonation and ensemble issues in evidence in this recording of Friday's performance, but all in all I think they did a great job of pulling together a big work in very little time.

Absent from school

We're an unschooling family. We don't normally do much in the way of structured schooling. When Sophie expressed an interest in L'Art de Lire French early in the summer I forgot all about it. She asked again. "Oh," I responded, feeling guilty, "were you expecting me to buy it for you -- like sometime nowishly¹?" Well, yes, she said. So I ordered it.

And though I'd forgotten all about it, it turned up in the mail. Right during one of the busy music school weeks. Fine. I figured we'd get to it some day. After all, like most curricular resources we own it would be more for inspiration and dabbling, not diligent study.

Sophie didn't get that memo. She tore into it. There's a teacher's manual that I suspect lays the whole curriculum out and guides the parent in introducing the language. I haven't yet peeked inside the cover. But that hasn't stopped Sophie from working blindly through the student workbook with ongoing enthusiasm. Last evening when I got home from rehearsal she asked me a question about conjugating irregular verbs and I realized she'd actually been working at it pretty darn effectively. She's making good progress.

Today I was gone all day again. Work, lessons with the older kids, chamber music rehearsals. I got home at 7 pm and Sophie was again working on French. She'd been stumped for a while, working only with the student book. But eventually she'd dug around and found an old French-English dictionary and done a bit of gap-filling by herself. "It's okay," she said, when I apologized again for not having spent a moment with her over the past couple of weeks on it. "Dictionaries are fun. I can do it myself."

It's only very rarely that I'm called upon to be a teacher to my homeschooled children. You'd think I could find at least a few minutes to sit down and look at the French program and then offer her a little guidance. Unfortunately I seem to be accumulating a string of unexcused absences from school. Fortunately Sophie doesn't seem to be suffering too badly.

1. nowishly [nou-ish-lee] adverb
at the present moment, more or less, though with some wiggle-room to allow for inertia, procrastination or disorganization, or all three.

Viola shift

That's an old photo, from 2005. Noah got his first Sabatier viola about a year before this photo was taken. He's since outgrown that 1/4-size instrument and recently has outgrown the replacement 1/2-size. His 3/4-size (13") will arrive within a week or so.

He's also getting a new teacher. Sort of. He and T (in the photo) have had something of an ongoing teacher-student relationship since the summer this photo was taken. They've had at least a few lessons every year. She lives in Calgary and is one of the teachers Erin studies violin with. (Violin and viola are pretty similar technique-wise, but the more advanced you get the more the repertoire diverges on the two instruments. T knows a lot of the advanced violin repertoire, so she's fine with teaching Erin the pieces she knows well, at least for now. T & her husband J, a violinist, team-teach Erin.) But now that Noah is outstripping his grandmother (a violinist who hasn't studied viola as well) in learning the viola repertoire, it seemed like a good time to shift the primary directing of his studies to a violist we're visiting every month anyway.

Since T is in town for all the local summer music school stuff, we're putting the two of them together a few times so that they can build a foundation for ongoing less frequent work together in the fall and onwards. Even though they know each other pretty well, every year Noah is a year older. Funny how that happens. It means that when they do work together they kind of have to shuffle around a little to find where to meet in terms of challenge and expectations. Sometimes they don't quite meet up at a first pass.

Case in point. Last week they had a brief lesson together. Somehow in the space of about 25 minutes they worked on three brand-new challenging bowing techniques: richochet, collé and sautillé (string players will be nodding, wide-eyed, at this point -- it's a huge amount of technique). All three have potential application in one of the Beethoven Dances Noah has just learned, and it was a very productive lesson I thought, given the time constraints. Lots of enticing new things to experiment with over the weekend, and the promise of more lesson-time this week to follow up on this stuff. Noah was really happy about the lesson.

But the next day he got extremely frustrated during his practicing. Somehow he had got it in his head that these bowing techniques, each of which typically takes an intermediate-advanced student months to master, should be learned immediately. He and I had a talk about it, and I reassured him that this was a slow gradual process. He seemed happier. The next day he was thrilled that his sautillé worked for 3 or 4 seconds on an open string note. The following day he reported that his ricochet was getting easier as he stiffened his bowhand a little. His expectations now seemed more realistic and he was happier.

Today was his next lesson. T asked him to play his Beethoven Country Dance to start out. He'd picked the tempo up to what she'd suggested and had clearly done some excellent work on it. But he struggled with the advanced bowing techniques; they weren't nearly ready to be inserted confidently into the piece and suddenly his realistic expectations were out the window. He was upset, really upset, that he hadn't mastered all three techniques to the point that they were easy and flexible and usable in his repertoire at performance tempo.

It was a case of his perfectionism and high standards not being held in check with an explicit enough declaration of expectations. If T had said "don't worry about the new bowing technique -- just play the piece," he probably would have been fine. Or "try the ricochet if you like; I know it's a bit of a gamble at this point -- no big deal." But as it was he decided as he played that she would only be satisfied or pleased if he nailed it all. And he didn't. And he veered perceptibly close to tears.

T reassured him that this was all just optional stuff for the Beethoven, and of course he wouldn't have it all down pat in four days. They moved on. Noah's feelings seem to recover. They moved on to start work on a new Brahms piece (Hungarian Dance #5) and did some really good work on it.

This evening I chatted with T about how Noah's lesson had gone. She said how badly she felt about how she'd handled the bowing stuff in the Beethoven and how sorry she was about upsetting him ... and she hoped he would be able to feel okay about her and about the viola.

This evening I also chatted with Noah about how his lesson had gone. He said it was "totally the awesome-est!" and that he'd come home and practiced yet again, for the third time today, and had tons of fun trying out the ideas he'd been given.

Aren't kids funny? You just can never tell what they'll take home from an experience. Noah's feelings are sometimes strong and close to the surface -- but as quickly as they're out there, they're dealt with and he's moved on. And there's still plenty of time in an hour to have "totally the awesome-est" lesson ever.

It's clear, I think, that the shift in primary viola teacher is going to work beautifully. Noah's a resilient, hard-working kid who takes his music very seriously. I can't imagine a better teacher for him. And I think the two of them will work through any bumps along the road just fine. I think they'll probably find a flow and a set of expectations that will work for both of them. In between monthly-ish lessons with T, Noah will still have his grandma available to help him structure and guide his practicing.

Somehow we just have to entice J & T to move to our area. Then everything would be perfect.

Jovano Jovanke

I'm not quite sure how this took shape. Two of the students (one being my eldest) had performed this at another institute with the ringleader-faculty-member. They decided between them that there should be a Valhalla version as well. So they conned, coerced, encouraged and brokered deals to get a couple of other students and a bunch of faculty members playing too. They performed it as an "entr'acte" between the cello and violin performances at the final concert. Amidst all the chair-shuffling, chaos and noise, they had a lot of fun. My first try at rendering this produced a lot of distortion from the tambourine; I think this version is a bit better.

There it is -- gone!

Finally! It was too late in the evening to call her two favourite [adult] friends to let them know, but you can bet we'll be hurrying around in the morning to show off the hole where Fiona's first missing tooth used to be. I've never seen a kid so happy-excited to see her own blood as this one was when she realized she'd knocked the thing looser yet and it was now only hanging by a thread. It didn't take long after that.

The other big news in Fiona's life today is that we've secured her a piano teacher. She's been waiting for this for almost a year. She'll be studying with Erin's piano teacher. I expect she'll do well with this teacher's approach, as she's already reading music reasonably well on violin. She starts in October. Perhaps she'll have lost another tooth by then.

Full moon alpine hike

It's not very often that the full moon falls on the one day between two music school weeks when we actually have time to go out and take advantage of it. There's this amazing famous alpine hike a few miles from where we live. You can drive up and up a hair-raisingly-precipitous logging road to a parking pull-out in the alpine and from there take a short easy 45-minute hike to the highest peak in the region. At the top you are ringed by all the other high peaks and ridges. It's an amazing 360-degree view, with the lake visible way way down below. For reasons that aren't clear, it's called Idaho Peak. Perhaps you can see Idaho from the top -- it's less than 90 miles, after all. It's the hike to do in the area. You always ask the tourists whether they've "been up Idaho yet." The snow is gone from early July to early September, and the alpine wildflowers peak in early August.

We've been up half a dozen times. The drive is not to be taken lightly, so it's not a trip we do every year. It had been four years since we last went, and yesterday I decided that the time had come to do a night hike in the full moon.

As it turned out Noah had a nasty cold and didn't feel up to going, so he and I stayed home. Chuck took the girls, which was convenient, because our 4WD vehicle only seats four (the van has ground clearance so low as to be problematic on this drive). They took a flashlight, but they didn't use it because the moon was so bright. And they didn't take a tripod, as you can see from the photo above, but the obligatory photos at the peak were taken anyway. The temperature was perfect and it was sooooo quiet up there. They arrived home exhilarated three hours later.