Homeschooling Friday #3
Oct. 1st, 2004 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccojWent pretty well. Daniel had asked if we could go to a museum, so after dropping off my Drafting assignment we went down to the Museum of Science and Technology. Visited the Crazy Kitchen, the Nortel network, taught Daniel out how to use a dial phone (and may I just say I always feel like I'm about 180 years old when I see that the phones I used in my childhood are on display in a museum?), figured out all of our ages in binary, stopped at the cafeteria for a snack and his regular-school spelling tests, then wandered around some more before going home.
Had lunch, then went to choir. Which was a little... odd. But in a good way.
The director was teaching choir theory, basically, and trying to get us to think about what it meant to be a cohesive choir with one choral voice. I had talked to Daniel about manners in choir, and we'd talked about how it's pretty hard for him to behave himself when we're slogging through a new piece of music. We'd decided that he could bring the D&D Player's Handbook to look at during the boring parts. Well, last week I found myself taking it away from him a couple of times because he really seemed far more interested in the handbook than choir. Finally gave up in disgust and just let him read, since that's all he wanted to do - and then suddenly heard his little voice joining in all on his own, with no prompting from me. I thought about it over the week and decided to let him read pretty much whenever he wanted, and not push him at all. After all, the point of choir is to get him to be with homeschooled kids, get me to be with homeschooling parents, expose him to music, and see if he likes choir. It's not supposed to be an intensive course in Music Appreciation Whether Daniel Likes It Or Not.
So I just let him go. Which was a good thing today, because the director was talking about stuff that I'm sure would've been deadly dull to Daniel if he'd been forced to listen to it and not look at the D&D book. As for actual singing, we didn't really do much. Repeated Gaudeamus Hodie about ninety times, did a bunch of scales, and held one note for about five minutes.
Anyway. So there I was, thinking Daniel was not involved in any of this, and telling myself that was OK. Then on the way to pick up Justin (30 min walk) I asked him what he thought of it, and he responded with a full and detailed account of what the director had been talking about that was... well, wrong, but showed he'd been listening and processing it all in his own way. And when I asked him what he thought of it, he said it was 'really cool' - because he loves Gaudeamus Hodie. And he likes reading. And can we go to choir every week?
O...K...
He also did a little bit of a music lesson at home, out of a couple of kids' music books I just bought. Just very simple "identify the black keys on the piano" and "play two notes with two fingers," but he seems interested. I think I'll see how piano goes in our home, and if we can handle lessons and I see actual learning, I'll try to find Spanish lesson books, because I obviously can't manage to teach them Spanish on my own.
We ended the day by working on Daniel's Halloween costume. He's quite thrilled at being allowed to use the sewing machine, and provides a running narrative of Worf working on Klingon battle armour as we sew. Hey, whatever works :)
Had lunch, then went to choir. Which was a little... odd. But in a good way.
The director was teaching choir theory, basically, and trying to get us to think about what it meant to be a cohesive choir with one choral voice. I had talked to Daniel about manners in choir, and we'd talked about how it's pretty hard for him to behave himself when we're slogging through a new piece of music. We'd decided that he could bring the D&D Player's Handbook to look at during the boring parts. Well, last week I found myself taking it away from him a couple of times because he really seemed far more interested in the handbook than choir. Finally gave up in disgust and just let him read, since that's all he wanted to do - and then suddenly heard his little voice joining in all on his own, with no prompting from me. I thought about it over the week and decided to let him read pretty much whenever he wanted, and not push him at all. After all, the point of choir is to get him to be with homeschooled kids, get me to be with homeschooling parents, expose him to music, and see if he likes choir. It's not supposed to be an intensive course in Music Appreciation Whether Daniel Likes It Or Not.
So I just let him go. Which was a good thing today, because the director was talking about stuff that I'm sure would've been deadly dull to Daniel if he'd been forced to listen to it and not look at the D&D book. As for actual singing, we didn't really do much. Repeated Gaudeamus Hodie about ninety times, did a bunch of scales, and held one note for about five minutes.
Anyway. So there I was, thinking Daniel was not involved in any of this, and telling myself that was OK. Then on the way to pick up Justin (30 min walk) I asked him what he thought of it, and he responded with a full and detailed account of what the director had been talking about that was... well, wrong, but showed he'd been listening and processing it all in his own way. And when I asked him what he thought of it, he said it was 'really cool' - because he loves Gaudeamus Hodie. And he likes reading. And can we go to choir every week?
O...K...
He also did a little bit of a music lesson at home, out of a couple of kids' music books I just bought. Just very simple "identify the black keys on the piano" and "play two notes with two fingers," but he seems interested. I think I'll see how piano goes in our home, and if we can handle lessons and I see actual learning, I'll try to find Spanish lesson books, because I obviously can't manage to teach them Spanish on my own.
We ended the day by working on Daniel's Halloween costume. He's quite thrilled at being allowed to use the sewing machine, and provides a running narrative of Worf working on Klingon battle armour as we sew. Hey, whatever works :)
