L Update

Poor L has been totally neglected on this blog since Little J came along.  I felt it was high time for an update!  Now that she is home for the summer we are making up for lost time and doing tons of activities together.

I really miss her while she is at school and am so thankful for the summers.

 

L has finished her primary Montessori programme and in September is going to be starting the Montessori elementary programme.  This took some serious soul searching for my husband and I as the school is a 45 minute drive away as well as a continued expense.  In the end we had no choice she is a Montessori child through and through.  She has such a joy and thirst for learning and knowledge that we want to encourage and foster.  The Montessori elementary programme is the obvious choice and we are so lucky that there is a programme available for her to attend.

  

I can really see an obvious transition from the 3-6 plane of development to the 6-9.  L is becoming so much more aware of her environment and the world in general.  She is full of questions such as " How did the first person get here?"  Yup she is so ready for elementary.

 

I am constantly amazed at what she has learned at school.  She knows all of her triangles and angles and is always pointing them out in every day life.  The other day she was naming the types of triangles and their angles of the pieces of cantaloupe she was eating for dessert.
Another thing she has accomplished that has blown my mind has been learning every single country on the map!!!  That's right.  At her school they learn the continents and countries by using puzzle maps.  Once they can identify all of the countries of a continent they get to paint it and then label them.  She managed to complete all of them.  I have taken pictures of all of the maps and am going to make a photo book atlas for her as a keepsake.

Her school has a set of bells which she has worked with since day one.  She has progressed passed matching and grading them onto to composition and her ear is amazing.  She can pick out songs on different instruments and play them by ear.

L has always loved words and began speaking and reading at an early age.  She is now confidently reading chapter books on her own.

Something that always seems to take me aback for some reason is her total support and genuine joy of her classmates accomplishments.  She is not competitive and all of the children in her school are so supportive of each other.  The teachers have really done a wonderful job of creating a peaceful, loving and genuine environment.

In many ways L is a pretty average 5 year old who is excitable, full of energy, challenging, sometimes whiny and can be supremely messy and unorganised.  However it is unmistakable when you meet her that she has a spark and something special about her.  Part of this spark has been fostered by Montessori and I can't say enough about how much of an amazing influence the Montessori method has had on L and on our family.

A couple examples of things that make her stand out as a Montessori child are:

When her Granny came back from Hawaii and gave her a bag of shells with a shell book the first thing she did was take them all out and classify them.

She loves to demonstrate works to her brother, rolls out a mat for him and when he tries to reach for them she says "hands in your lap"

Here she has turned Little J's dressing activity into a folding work.

While making cupcakes for Little J's birthday she says hey this one looks like Djibouti! Of course I said Ja what?  Her response: You know mommy the country in Africa. 

She seems so much older than she really is and sometimes I realise because of this we expect a lot of her.  I am constantly reminded when I see other non Montessori children just how much we expect of her and how much she does around the house and for herself.

At the beginning of the summer we made a list of things we would both like to do together.  We have already accomplished many of them which I am excited to share.

Of course this description is just the tip of the iceberg of our special girl.  As I look back on those first posts I realise how far she has come.  It has taken a bit for me to get over the fact that she is changing from a little girl into a big girl and I am excited to see what her next phase of development holds!



Infant Music Time

 

Having been a professional musician music has always been a huge part of my life.  One thing I am trying to do as a mother is to instill that love of music in my children.  With both L and Baby J I started basically from birth.  We listen to all types of music in our house and the children were given instruments from the moment they were able to hold them.

 

As part of our routine  Baby J, Sweetpea and I have our daily music time.  Every morning before lunch I  go over to the instrument basket and say time for music.  The babies bob up and down with excitement and Sweetpea scoots over to the basket.  They both look at the CD player in anticipation.  I play a variety of different music from classical to African marimba.

 

This is our music basket.  It contains a set of symbols, a rainmaker, xylophone, egg shakers and castanets.  I have also recently added a tambourine, jingle bells and a clapper.  This basket is on the other side of the room from their shelves but is still available to them at all times.  Baby J has been using these instruments for a few months now but they were relatively new to Sweetpea.  At first she had no idea how they worked and just went from one to the next.  It didn't take her long however to catch on and now she will pick up the mallet for the xylophone to play it and hold the symbols by the handles to play them.  It is very rare for them now to misuse the instruments. 

Sweetpea also does the cutest thing.  She can't quite consistently make the sound on the castanets but she knows what they sound like so she holds them up and makes the clicking sound with her tongue instead! What a smart little cookie!

We have a wonderful time jamming out to different styles of music and going from one instrument to another, passing each other instruments back and forth to try. 

The other day L had a day off and was excited to participate in music time with us.  She got out her marimba and we all jammed together.   Our favourite CD is one of a local Marimba band who play African marimba music.

L left out her marimba and Sweetpea made a b-line for it.  She knew exactly what to do and even got the mallets facing the right way. 

We also sing and dance.  This is so easy to do and children love it.  You don't need to even buy any instruments.  You can make a rainmaker out of a paper towel roll and some rice, shakers out of bottles and drums from pots and wooden spoons!  I haven't met a child yet that doesn't love to get down and jam to some groovin' music!

Driftwood Xylophone

Wee Folk Art recently posted this video on their Facebook page on how to make a driftwood xylophone.

It was a nobrainer that we HAD to try this out.

A few weekends ago L, Daddy and I went to the beach and tested out pieces of driftwood to see if they were resonant.  We collected them and lay them across two large logs.  Once we played them we sorted them out according to pitch putting the lowest at one end and the highest at the other.

Here is L rockin' out on our driftwood xylophone!  It sounded just like the one in the video!

I collected a few more pieces and we did this for music class this afternoon and made a huge xylophone with rolled up beach towels to go along with our study of African music.

World Music-Asia

 I've been teaching a Music Appreciation class at L's Montessori school this past year.  The children are ages 3 to 6.  Lately we have been studying music from the different continents.

For each "World Music Class" I ask one of the children to roll out a mat and another to place the colored globe on it.  I then ask another child to find the continent we are going to be studying on the globe.

I usually have three part cards prepared for the particular instruments from that continent or in this case country.  Since Asia is so big we have narrowed it down to the music of China for this year.

I presented instrument cards for the erhu, dizi, pipa, ruan and yang qin.  We talked about how they looked and their European counterparts.  We also listened to this gorgeous video which demonstrates all of the above instruments.  The children held up the appropriate card when they saw the instrument being played.

(photo from Google Images)

Years ago I was lucky enough to be given a dizi or Chinese flute from one of my students.  I was able to play a Chinese song on it for the children and then let them all try it out for themselves.

(photo from Google Images)

We also prepared for learning about music from Asia by first learning the notes of the major scale "do re mi fa sol la ti do".  The children are lucky enough to have a set of bells in the classroom so they are all familiar with the sound of the scale.  We also sang the song "Do a Deer".

 The pentatonic scale is made up of only five notes which are do re mi sol la.  This scale is used in folk music all over the world but when played you can really hear the distinct sounds used in Chinese and Asian music.  I first played the scale for the children on this little xylophone and then we sang it together. 

 I set up four work stations on different tables. The first was the xylophone with stars on the notes of the pentatonic scale.  The other two tables had five water glasses which had been pre-tuned to the pentatonic notes.  I drew little lines on the glasses with window crayons and the older children poured water to the lines.  We also had a station where we'd selected only the five bells from the pentatonic scale.  The children took turns at each station.  The collective sounds produced were beautiful and the head teacher (who was cleaning the washrooms at the time ) said it sounded like she was in China town. 

(hmm I've just noticed in this picture that someone has moved the stars around)

This was a simple and effective way for the children to hear and make the distinct sounds of the music from this continent.

Australia

Okay the continent box is taking ages to complete so in the mean time I thought I'd post about some of the activities we have been doing.

I have to say it's been soooo fun learning all about Australia and I have learned just as many new things as L. I also wanted to start off by saying that the reason I picked Australia to start with instead of North America is because even before we began our activities it was constantly a topic of conversation.  We've been Skyping with some wonderful friends there and my dad just got back from a holiday there.  So to me it seemed like a natural progression to start with this continent.  I also decided to just keep our studies concentrated on  Australia for now.  When L gets older and we revisit it we will talk about the other countries in this area.

So here we go....

I found this wonderful site that has a page with tons of Aboriginal symbols.  L and I talked about rock paintings and the different symbols and their meanings.  We then made up stories with our painted symbols.

L's is in the middle.  The cool thing was that L could tell my stories by the symbols I painted. 

Here is the link to that fantastic printout.

Next we talked about Didgeridoos and listened to and watched lots of examples of people playing on Youtube.  We talked about how they are made and that they were originally invented by the Aboriginal peoples of Northern Australia.

We also talked about dot art and looked at many examples.

Here are our own versions out of wrapping paper tubes.
We painted them brown first and then added our dot art decorations.  I painted on the animals on L's and she added the dots.

L really wanted to play like a real Aboriginal person so we painted her with white paint with some Aboriginal symbols.  L was VERY serious about the whole thing and put on a little concert for us. (I hope this doesn't offend anyone.  We have being studying all types of Australian culture with the utmost respect)

I found this amazing song on Youtube call True Blue Wonders which uses the didgeridoo to make the sounds of different Australian animals.  This is what L is playing to in the picture.

You can also download this song and it comes along with lots of great teaching materials.

Today we listened to it in my music class, tapped along with rhythm sticks and made didgeridoos.  They were such a hit that we're doing it again next week!

The most amazing bit is about four days ago a small import store in our area had a going out of business sale and unbelievably they had an actual didgeridoo on sale for only $35!!!  So of course I had to get it and we've been learning to play it ever since.  The kids in the music class went crazy for it and couldn't get enough!

Pics to follow in another post.

Bath Flutes

One of the best gifts L got for Christmas this year are these water flutes.  She uses them in the bathtub and we both love them.  As well as having fun playing there are so many learning opportunities.

You tune the flutes by adding water up to the line of whichever note you would like.  L is able to see how making the tube smaller by adding water makes a higher sound and filling with less water makes a lower sound.

They also come with music sheets which have color coded notes.  You tune the flutes and then L just follows along with the colors.  L can play Mary Had A Little Lamb and Old MacDonald.  She can also make up her own songs.

This is not a review post.  I just thought I'd share how much we both love this Christmas gift!!

Die Moldau

Being a musician myself one of my hopes is that I can instill the same love of music in my daughter.  My approach to introducing L to music is not to have her know all of the composers, when they were born and what they look like.  To me at three years old those things are irrelevant and not necessary.  I would much rather have L really listen to and appreciate music.  Have her be able to really feel something when she hears a piece and be able to listen well enough to hear different changes in melody, instrumentation, tempo and dynamics. 

To start L's introduction to Classical music I have used program music.  This type of music is composed to tell a story.  I think this is the easiest way for L to hear how composers manipulate music and instruments to represent different things or ideas.

This week our piece was Die Moldau, a gorgeous symphonic poem by Bedrich Smetana which describes the sights and sounds along the banks of the Moldau or Vltava river that flows through Prague.

L and I listened to the music a few times and talked about the different "themes" such as a Peasant wedding,  the great castle and even water nymphs.  We then looked at some pictures from the Internet.

Once we had an idea in our heads we set to work painting our scenes.

Here is our voyage along the Moldau river.

(I've included the timings in for each scene from this Youtube recording)

The piece begins with two flutes each playing fast moving notes to represent two little streams or tributaries that flow into the Moldau.

You can see our pillow boats on the side waiting until we get to the bigger river.

The stream pattern is then passed on to the lower strings to represent the streams joining(00:53) and flowing into the main river.  This is where we get in and listen to the main river theme played by the violins (00:59).

Okay we're on our way.  First off we pass by a grand forest and we can hear the the French horns and trumpets introducing the "Hunting in the Forest theme"(1:54)

We then float along the banks and can hear the music from a Peasant Wedding(2:48).  We moor our pillow boats and get off to dance with the guests.

We dance until late into the night and the moon comes out.  We climb back onto our boats just in time to float past some water nymphs frolicking in the moonlight which is played by the two flutes again(4:27).

We continue along and hear the river theme again(6:38).  The river gets choppier and choppier as the music gets more agitated(7:17).  Finally with great excitement we go down "The Rapids of St. John" and the huge waterfall(8:18).  Phew we held on tight and didn't fall out of our boats!

Around the bend and the "Ancient Castle Vysehrad" (8:31)comes into view introduced by a regal theme played by the brass.  We wave to the people in the castle and stare in awe at it's grandeur.

Then it's time to move along the river as the music becomes calm again(10:00) and we've finished our journey.

L was so excited to take Granny on the Moldau she woke us all up at 6:30 with the pillow boats ready!

Here are some other posts on the music and compositions we've explored so far:

Peter and the Wolf

Carnival of the Animals

Carnival of the Animals part 2

The Four Seasons

The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra

The Joy of Music

I've linked this post up to The Adventures of Bear's Artists and Art series.  To see more in the series go to the button on the right side bar.

Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

I have been teaching a music appreciation and understanding class at L's Montessori school.  The children are between the ages of 3and 5.  It has been great fun and we have spent the last few weeks learning about why music is written, how it makes you feel, rhythm, dynamics, and the orchestral instruments.

Each week we talked about a different family of instruments using three part cards(Woodwind, Brass, Strings, and Percussion) had some demonstrations and got to try some of the instruments out. 
Once the children were familiar with all of the instruments we listened to The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten.  This piece was originally written for an educational documentary film on the instruments of the orchestra.  It begins with a simple theme played by the whole orchestra and then by each family of instruments.  Britten highlights each instrument individually in a series of variations.

I presented this piece by laying all of the instrument cards out on a mat in their family groups.  As the piece began I pointed out which group was playing.  Once the individual instruments were introduced we all "air" played them along with the music.  This was super fun as we started with a tiny piccolo and ended standing up playing the timpani. 
It's a fairly long piece and I wasn't sure if it would hold the children's attention but amazingly we "air" played every instrument in the orchestra!  It was great fun and a good way to familiarise the children with the instruments without actually having them all in the room.

Here is a link to a description of the piece and the order of the instruments and here is a link to the piece on Youtube.
You can also print out these Instrument Nomenclature cards from Counting Coconuts that Mari-Ann so generously shared. 
Happy Music Making!

I've linked this post to the Artists and Art series at The Adventures of Bear.  Clink on the link in the right sidebar to see more.

Merry Christmas and Last Week of Advent activities

Our last week of advent calendar activities.  Phew!  L was on Christmas holidays this week.  In a way I miss the days when it was just L and I doing lots of Montessori activities and crafts so this past week was really nice.

Day 20

"Sing Christmas carols"

We had friends over in the afternoon and had a great singalong with all of the instruments.  My friend is a wonderful singer and it was so much fun with her singing harmonies to our favorite carols.  In the evening we had another family singalong.

Day 21

"Make puppets from the Nutcracker"

We have a very condensed story version of the Nutcracker which we have been reading and have also been listening to the music from the ballet.  I printed out the puppets from here.  L was so excited and colored, cut and taped them all with almost no help from me. (I did get to color one or two of the puppets : )

Amazingly we watched the whole ballet on Youtube performed by the Royal Ballet in London.  I couldn't believe L sat and watched the whole thing.  It was also enjoyable for me as I've never actually seen it!  I've always been playing in the pit orchestra!!

After watching we put on the puppet show with me singing all of the parts.  Too much fun!  Next year we will definitely go and see it live.

 Day 22

"Make Christmas ornaments"

We made salt dough ornaments for all of the family as presents from L.  She used our Christmas cookie cutters and once they had baked for a couple of hours she painted them and then wrapped them all up.  She will hand them out to everyone on Christmas day.

 Day 23

"Look in the bathroom"

I just couldn't resist getting these little fairy clothes pins from the dollar store.  I know they're not very Christmasy but they're sooo cute!  We're big into fairies at our house right now.

 Day 24

"Go to Mommy and Daddy's bedroom"

Today was very special because Daddy got home really early from work and was able to do L's activity with her.  I found a discounted Christmas package of Wiki Sticks last year and saved them for this very occasion.

Well that's it folks.  We're packing up and heading off to a beautiful resort and spa for the next couple of days(thanks Dad!) and then going up to the Mountain to go skiing. 
Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season with their families and I'm looking forward to reading all about it!
Merry Christmas!

The Four Seasons Vivaldi style

Lately we've been listening to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

I painted four of these bare trees for each of us.  I then put on one of the seasons and while we listened to it we talked about that season and painted our tree how it would look at that particular time of year. 

I hung the finished products up by our kitchen table so we can talk about them and see them whenever we eat.  We can also see the changing season out the windows as we talk.

The next activity we did was focusing on a specific season and that was Spring.  We listened to the first movement and focused on the form.  In this movement there are four particular themes that you can hear.  We have a different scarf for each theme.  The green scarf represents the trees, colorful red birds, blue river, black and gold thunderstorm and pink and yellow sunshine.

At first I called out each theme as it came and L picked up the corresponding scarf and waved it like a tree or bird etc.

The second time she was able to hear the themes herself and had a ball running back and forth picking up the scarves as the music changed.

The order is trees,birds,trees,river,trees,thunderstorm,trees,sun,trees,sun and trees.  They are quite easy to identify after listening to it a few times and as I said even L got them after the second try.

I got this fantastic idea from here.

While I was searching for a recording of The Four Seasons on Youtube I came across this these amazing videos of sand animation.  The whole family watched them totally amazed and L and I wanted to try it for ourselves.

So here we are in our tiny bathroom in the dark : )

I used a deep white plastic tray and rested it between two small stools.  We added some sand and put a reading lamp underneath the tray.  I had the laptop in there as well and we watched the videos as we drew.

Here are some of L's impressions. 

This was so fun and cool and I know we're going to be going into the bathroom quite often : )  It would also be a novel way to learn how to write letters.

Check out the artists and art button on the right to see what others have done this week.



Carnival of the Animals part two

We 've been working on our second Carnival of the Animals project for the past week.  What we were working on was a shadow puppet theatre and show!

I started off by finding coloring pages of the different animals and copying them into a word document where I could get all of their sizes to the same scale. I then printed them off and let L color and help to cut them out.

I pasted them onto a cardboard cereal box and cut them out again.  L then painted both sides black.  Once they were dry I taped pieces of wooden skewers to the back of some and for others taped a piece of thread to the back and tied a piece of skewer to the top for L to hold.

We took inspiration for our theatre from Childhood Magic, using a cardboard box, gluing tissue paper to it and taping a piece of white paper to the front.

L has been putting on the show for all of our neighbors and has been taking it SOOO seriously.  The best is her running commentary that goes along with each piece.

Here are a few shots of one of her shows.

This is a view from the back.  I cut a slit in the top so she could hang different puppets down to make them dance and jump.

I also cut out some tree silhouettes and some seaweed for the aquarium and taped them to the front paper.

Here are some of the other puppets.  She put the lion on our set of coasters for his rock and also used it for the cuckoo.

We had an absolute blast creating this whole production and L has preformed it for quite a few of my mom's friends getting better each time.  She now sings along with the pieces and says all of the animals sounds with the instruments.  Our friend made a video of the show and put it on a DVD which we will cherish forever.

We look forward to making up some more shows in our new little shadow theatre!

If you have any  questions about how we did any of the above just leave them in the comments section.

The Carnival of the Animals

We had so much fun doing activities centered around Peter and the Wolf that I decided to try out The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens with L.

It is a classical piece with fourteen short movements each musically depicting a different animal.

If you haven't heard of it before I would really recommend checking it out.  The pieces are a brilliant introduction to classical music as you can really hear the different characteristics of each animal. For example the clarinet plays the cuckoo sound of a cuckoo and the violin the "eehaah" of the donkey. The link above has a detailed description of each movement.

For L's first introduction I told her the name of the piece and that it was about different animals.  As we listened to each one we acted out the animal and talked about which instruments represented each animal. 

 L insists on wearing her feather crown every time : )

You can hear different versions of The Carnival of the Animals on Youtube.  Here is one example.

More of our awesome Carnival of the Animals adventures coming soon!!

It's summer and I for one am trying to take a break from formal Montessori activities.  L has other ideas though.  I have to say I'm happy, especially in the mornings she will go and pick something now that she hasn't picked in ages and want to do it.

The other day she picked the mystery bag.  After doing it the usual way I made up an extension where I got two of every object and put one of each in the bag.  She would feel one object and then try and find it's match in the bag.  She really enjoyed this and found it quite easy.

We did this wonderful activity that we did last year again but this time I mixed up the colors and L painted each compartment.  She then went round the garden and found things that matched.

After doing our instrument activities and learning about Peter and the Wolf L made her own instrument.  A rain maker.  We got an old paper towel tube and taped aluminum foil to one end.  Then L poured in some rice and we sealed up the other end with foil as well.

We made paper mache out of water and flour and L tore up the newspaper.

Once it was dry L painted it and glued on lots of sequins.  Here she's using it outside since happily this is the only sound of rain we've heard in a while!

Peter and the Wolf

 We've been learning about different instruments and their sounds for about a year now and I printed out some instrument cards for L to name.  We also talked about the different families the instruments belong to-woodwind, brass, strings and percussion and sorted the cards into each of their families.

Yesterday L and I listened to my recording of Peter and the Wolf together.  You can hear a similar version here.  We cuddled on the couch and she loved being scared of the wolf.  When it was done she asked for it a second time and we acted out all of the characters as the instruments played.

We then got out the water colors and painted each of the characters.  At first she was quite abstract but as she went on they became more realistic.  You might be able to make out the Grandfather at the top and a tree and pond on the right.  Anyway I also painted some with the idea of making puppets.

As soon as I got out the scissors L wanted to cut hers out too.  So we made two sets of puppets.

After dinner we put on a puppet show for Daddy while the CD played.  It was fantastic.  L was so into it and SO serious about the whole thing.  She just couldn't wait for the wolf to come on so she could make her ahooo sounds.

Today we put the show on again for Granny with equal excitement and then matched the characters up with their instruments.

This is a wonderful way to introduce children to music and the instruments of the orchestra.