Dude's To-Do List and Mom's Small Victory!!

Tonight, my 9-year-old son asked for a pencil and paper when he was in his bed.  (He always does his most creative work when he is avoiding going to sleep!)  A short while later, he knocked on his bedroom wall which is on the other side of the living room wall.  That is his signal for me to come to his room.  (The Hubs usually gets startled and jumps a few inches into the air ... EXTREMELY amusing.)  I went to his room and he handed me this To-Do List.

Why, you might ask, is this a small victory?  For two reasons:  One, this animated, fun-loving boy could never be bothered with penmanship.  He has struggled to write legibly every single year.  Our first year of homeschooling (1st grade), I thought I had to do EVERYTHING in the box curriculum we were using or he would be "behind".  I had to keep up with the Jones' kids that were homeschooling and little Johnny Jones learned cursive in 1st grade.  So, dadgumit, we were going to learn cursive, too!!  <hands on hips, doing the head bob>  I forced my poor little guy to try and learn cursive.  The dude could barely write manuscript and I rarely could read what he wrote.  He was in TEARS every single day.  (NOT my finest homeschool teacher moment ... but, I was a newbie)  So, this list was fabulous because I could READ it without any problems!!  I truly and seriously thought that there was something wrong with him when it came to handwriting.  I did the big, should-have-known-better no-no and compared his handwriting to other kids' handwriting.  You know the ones ... the kids whose handwriting is so neat it looks like a computer font?!!!  Turns out, there's not a thing wrong with my little guy!  He is blissfully NORMAL for a 9-year-old, active, doesn't-like-to-sit-still boy!  (He actually did his spelling words standing on his head once.  True story!)  Also, I saw that he corrected his own mistakes.  He had written the lowercase g and d backwards, but he erased it and did it the right way without Mom's help!  Hallelujah!  Thank you, Jesus!  ;-)

Lastly, everything on his list was spelled correctly except for one word (he left an s out of dressed).  When I told him it was misspelled, he looked at it and added the s without me telling him what was wrong.  Woohoo!!!  Granted, these were not difficult words, but it still made me deliriously happy!

I know that this list and my little celebrations may seem silly. When you are responsible for the entirety of your child's education, however, penmanship and spelling can literally keep you up at night if you feel like they aren't getting it.  These moments let me know that we are heading in the right direction!  He really IS learning!  *sigh of relief*  :-)  

Remember, give your kids and yourself a break; don't compare them to other kids!  Every child is different and learns at their own pace and in their own way.  And always, always look for the small victories and celebrate them!!  They will keep you sane!  LOL

Here's the picture of little man practicing his spelling words while standing on his head in the traditional homeschool uniform (a.k.a. pajamas).  You can't NOT take a picture of that!  Right??!!

John Williams Composer Study

I am so excited about studying John Williams!  He is my very favorite composer for movie scores.  I was a music composition major and for a while toyed with the idea of being a movie score composer.  Dude already loves his work because of Star Wars.  He walks around singing pieces from the Star Wars score all the time.  WE LOVE JOHN WILLIAMS!!!  (Can you tell I'm a little excited?!)  ;-)  John Williams is the first composer that we will be studying this year because the kids already love his music and I know it will be a good intro into composer studies in general for them.

If you aren't familiar with John Williams' work (and you totally should be!), he wrote the score for the following movies:  Hook, E.T., Indiana Jones, Home Alone (first 2 movies), Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws and of course ... Star Wars!  He also wrote the Olympic Fanfare and Theme.  (Personal Pavlovian moment:  everytime I hear the Olympic Fanfare, a mental image of Bob Costas pops in my head!  Weird, right?!)  John Williams is probably the most recognized composer of our time.  Check out Wikipedia for more information about his life and work.

I have explained how we will be doing our composer studies and uploaded a lot of FREE printables on the Johann Sebastian Bach composer study post.  We will be using the Composer Timeline and the Composer Pictures for this study.  Here is also a John Williams Composer notebook page to print that you will use each week for this study.  My little Princess (age 5) will do a coloring sheet while she listens and I will write her responses into the notebook page.  Dude (age 9) will do the coloring sheets if he wants to.  (Sometimes, he is "too old" for coloring!)  I tried to find YouTube videos that were of an orchestra playing each piece.  As the kids are able to see the instruments, they can begin to associate the sound with each instrument.

Week 1

• Listen to the Theme from Star Wars
• Write what you hear (instruments, dynamics, similarities to other pieces by John Williams) and what you feel while listening on the Composer Study page.
• Lego Star Wars coloring page

Week 2

• Listen to the Theme from Indiana Jones
• Write what you hear and feel on the Composer Study page.
• Coloring sheets - there are a variety here.  We are going to use the comic strip one!

Week 3

• Listen to the Olympic Fanfare and Theme
• Write what you hear and feel on the Composer Study page.
• Balance beam coloring sheet or medal ceremony coloring page

Week 4

• Listen to the Theme from Superman
• Write what you hear and feel on the Composer Study page.
• Lego Superman coloring page 

Week 5

• Listen to the Theme from Jaws (John Williams has the audience guess the piece. Very fun!)
• Write what you hear and feel on the Composer Study page.
• Shark coloring page

Week 6

• Listen to Flight to the Neverland from Hook
• Write what you hear and feel on the Composer Study page.
• Captain Hook and Peter Pan coloring page

Family Time:  We will be watching Hook together as a family this week, too.  Before we watch it, I will have them watch this short YouTube video, Jaws: The Importance of John Williams.  It plays a clip of the movie without the score.  Then, it shows the same clip with the score.  It is amazing to see the difference that adding music makes!  With this new information in their little brains, I will ask them to pay attention to how the music in Hook adds to each character and important scenes.  Have fun, enjoy John Williams' music and may the force be with you!!!  :-)

Bach Composer Study

One of the composers we will be studying this year is Johann Sebastian Bach.  I know that my two kiddos are going to love hearing his music, especially Toccata and Fugue in D minor - think Looney Tunes and Fantasia!

My Dude is 9 years old (4th grade) and my Princess girl is 5 (1st grade).  For Dude, I will have a notebooking page for him to record his thoughts about Bach's music and life.  There is a place for him to write the name of each piece that we will listen to every week and to write about what he hears (instruments, voices, fast, slow, etc.).  I also want him to write how the piece makes him feel.  Charlotte Mason says that children should have a personal relationship with whatever it is that they are learning.  Music invokes feelings.  By writing how the piece makes him feel, he will remember more about it. There is also space to write some facts about Bach's life at the bottom.  For Princess, I have some coloring pages for her while she listens.  Each of them will have their own Composer Study notebook to keep their pages in.  I may end up doing a notebooking page for Princess, too.  I will end up doing the writing for her.  But, honestly, she is at that age where she says the most hilarious things!  I am sure that she would give me plenty of blackmail material for the future  funny quotable quotes for the grandparents.

Both of them will also have a Composer Timeline in their notebook.  Each two page spread will cover one time period of music.  At the beginning of each term, they will post a picture of the new composer we are studying on their timeline.  Here is where you can find the composer pictures for this year's studies.  This will help them place their composers in the correct time period of music (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.)  This year we will study composers from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic and Contemporary time periods.  Here is a fun Music History Timeline for you to reference.  I am going to have Dude put a copy in his Composer Study notebook so that he can see where each composer fits into the rest of world history.

We won't be taking a lot of time each week in composer study.  We follow the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education which includes short lessons.  For more information about why we do short lessons, go here.

I have made a playlist of 6 Bach pieces on YouTube.  We will listen to one each week.  You can find the playlist here.  I am also going to have a CD of Bach pieces that we will be listening to over the next six weeks when we are in the car.  By the end of the six weeks, they should be very familiar with Bach's style.

Week 1

• Listen to Toccata and Fugue in D minor from the YouTube playlist
• Bach teaching his children coloring page for Princess
• Notebooking page for Dude
• Place picture of Bach on our Composer timeline under the Baroque period

Week 2

• Listen to Air ("on the G string")
• Instruments of the Orchestra coloring page for Princess & Dude
• Notebooking page for Dude

Week 3

• Listen to Brandenburg Concerto 2 - 3rd movement
• Trumpet coloring page for Princess
• Notebooking page for Dude

Week 4

• Listen to Cello Suite No 1 prelude
• Cello coloring page for Princess
• Notebooking page for Dude

Week 5

• Listen to Double Violin Concerto in D minor
• V is for Violin coloring sheet for Princess
• Notebooking page for Dude

Week 6

• Listen to St John Passion - Ruht Wohl ihr heiligen Gebeine
• Chorale coloring sheet for Princess
• Notebooking page for Dude

Bach notebooking page

Here are the links for the coloring pages for Princess:

Bach teaching his children and short bio

V is for Violin

Cello coloring page

Trumpet online coloring page

Instruments of the Orchestra coloring page/orchestra layout

Chorale Coloring page


There is also a book that I will read aloud to the kiddos during the term about Bach's life that you can download for free called Johann Sebastian Bach: The Story of the Boy Who Sang in the Streets.

We will be studying 5 other composers this year.  They are Ludwig van Beethoven, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, John Williams and Duke Ellington.  As soon as I complete the other terms, I will post them here.  The plan is to start the year with John Williams because they already love his music (Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman!).  We will be doing Tchaikovsky around Christmas so that I have a good excuse to listen to the Nutcracker Suite incessantly!  :-)  Have fun and enjoy your homeschooling journey!!