Well, James is much more excited about the Theater class. He got a speaking part – he gets to be a policeman. I went to the Fiddling class with him today. 1 hour is pretty long for a beginner. He was getting so tired. As the guitar teacher was working with the guitars/banjos, and the violin teachers was working with the fiddles, I worked with James. I took my cello too. A 1 hour lesson with mom 5 days a week. Sheesh. He’s really going to know if he wants to do cello or not! At one point the violin teacher stepped out for about 15 minutes. I continued to work with James to learn his (simplified) part. As I was helping James with a bow hold I started to banter with him because I was losing his concentration.
“What’s that death grip you got going over there on that right hand of yours?”
“Straight thumb? Can you run with straight legs? You certainly can’t run with the bow with a straight thumb!” (etc…) And James was of course making his silly comments back and I would counter with something else silly. The violin (fiddle) students that were next to us kept looking over at us.
When he got tired of playing with the group I let him rest. So when he dropped out I didn’t play the open strings. When I came in playing something more complicated than open strings, the class took notice. James said to me embarrassed, “Mom, they’re all looking at you.” It’s not like I was showing off. I was just playing the harmony part given to me. I guess my cello projected nicely. (As it always does.)
Anthony and Benjamin got to do painting with smelly paints today. Grape, watermelon, strawberry smelling pictures came home today. Benjamin’s was mostly orange. YUMMY FUN! Anthony drew a good self portrait and did one of Benjamin too. I asked Benjamin if he tried to do one himself. He said, “No, it got all crazy. Anthony did it for me.” The picture Anthony did of Ben was quite good. The circle for the head was nearly a perfect circle. Impressive! (Especially if you see what his drawings were like at the beginning of his preschool year. Yea Anthony!)
Speaking of Anthony…tonight we were reading “I Know a Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello”. After the shy fellow eats all the instruments, he burped them back out. When each instrument comes out on the page some notes follow behind it. For a few of the instruments I sang a 2 bar phrase how they might sound. When we got to the last page, “And out cha cha-ed the cello” I didn’t sing anything.
Anthony said, “mom! why didn’t you sing anything for the cello?”
“Oh, I just didn’t.”
“Well sing something.”
So I did 2 bars of Bach’s 1st Suite, Prelude.
Anthony then said, “No it should be this…” and he proceeded to sing his own 2 bar melody in a 5/8 time as if it were the most natural thing in the world! I told him that he was right. I liked that one much better.
It amazed me because for a classically trained musician (or at least for me when I was trying to learn it in High School) 5/8 time doesn’t come naturally. But to Anthony, who has been listening to all the various folk songs that I’ve been exposing him to through Music Together, it just naturally flowed out of him! Kids are just amazing to me!
