Graduation

Last Tuesday Sara had her recital and graduated from Music Makers I to Music Makers II.  I tried to get video and pics even though I was holding a wiggly Brennan.  This is the best I could do.

Floor piano key exercise

Old Brass Wagon song

Two Black Keys

Graduation

She has improved so much this semester. At the beginning she couldn't play any of the keys purposefully and she couldn't put her thumb on Do but by the end of this class she can do it pretty well.  Dan and I have worked pretty heavily with her at home just to get her fingers on the right keys and get them rounded like "rainbows" as we tell her.

I'm looking forward to taking her to Music Makers II even though the classes are getting progressively difficult for me having Brennan along.  He is getting more active and her classes are getting longer.  The teacher has encouraged me that Brennan will be fine and that if we wants to hold an instrument at some point we'll just hand him one and it's no big deal.  I really want to keep up Sara's lessons because in the end it really will matter.  Giving a kid the gift of music is a lifelong gift and it's more important than any 45 minutes of struggling I have to go through with Brennan, it's all temporary and she's maturing by the day.  She already does most of the class by herself now anyway.

Plus soon she will be in school and I won't have this special time to spend with her in her music class.   For now, she'll be a Music Maker II starting this week.  Even if she does not stick with Piano, maybe this will give her a music foundation to start with if she ever wants to pick up another instrument.  It can't hurt.

In other news, Sara counted to 10 by herself this week, backwards and forwards with the help of a cheat sheet she carries around.  We wrote all the numbers down on a piece of paper, and she "studies" with it.  It kind of perplexed us that she knows so many numbers, specifically the numbers that are on the Thomas series trains, but she can't count in sequence from 1 to the number 10, so we tried to motivate her to do it.  We told her she could have a donut if she counted to 10 and today she did.  She loves donuts and after we made the offer it only took her one day to learn how.

Also we've been teaching her small words to read in her books like, the, is, and, he, too, etc.  I've pointed out that a double "o" in a word like school, too, and tool makes the "oo" sound and she's caught on to that pretty well, tonight she read the word "zoo" by herself.  I think she'll catch on pretty quick.  She loves her books so much and I know she wants to learn to read, especially her Thomas books which she already knows by heart anyway.

Lastly in the updates, here she is at the table reading her "Big Backyard" magazine that Granny KP gets her.  She was telling us all about this walrus, saying that he is a bad walrus that does not take his baths, he's angry, and poops in his diaper but she was going to give him big hugs and kisses and make him nice again.  We never know what she is going to say.

She recently wanted to watch a nature documentary that turned out to be a really violent one where whales ate seals, seals squished their pups, and bloody walruses jabbed each other with their tusks.   We turned it off and she threw a fit because she wanted to watch it but the reality of it was starting to bother us.  It is cool that she likes to watch nature shows though, especially ones about marine life, she asks for them specifically.