Piano Recital

I am so proud of my pianists! Their recital was a couple of weekends ago, and they all worked so hard on their pieces. I am so impressed at the music I'm hearing around our house these days, too...it is hard to believe that WWD and MRD have now been taking piano for almost 4 years, and KLD almost 3--she hardly even knew her letters when she first started!

(In this picture MRD really wanted to SHOW you her piece--can you tell what a hard one it is?!?)
During these years there have been times when I have wondered if we should let them branch out and try a different instrument, or even quit when they encountered a rough patch. No, and no. I think of music as a language that is too important for them not to learn. Also, I love that they're getting to experience the process of working hard to master something that really takes time, effort, and practice. Letting them quit seems almost like letting them quit brushing their teeth, as in "You'll thank me for this someday, I promise!" :) Not that any of them really wants to quit, especially after recital time when they are so proud of their accomplishments.

Did I mention that I'm so proud of you guys?!

Fine Arts

This morning we had a spontaneous fine arts outbreak in our homeschool. The girls are SERIOUSLY into their fairies, and now have moved from simply reading the books to drawing each of the fairies, and even inventing their own line of fairies. How could I interrupt these geniuses at work, just for something ordinary like math or grammar? So they worked on fairies this morning...

Here's an excerpt from MRD's masterpiece:

And from KLD, who is making a beautiful fairy book:

Meanwhile, JPD worked with watercolors:

And WWD got out his landscape painting kit and tried his hand at a beachscape:


While they worked, we listened to the musical biography of Wagner, continuing from our brief study of the Norse Gods last week.

While they were working busily away at the kitchen table, I took advantage of the opportunity to cut up a pork roast and stick it in the crock pot to make a yummy dinner. :)

This afternoon we spent some time working with base-10 blocks to shore up some math concepts. For our Saint-of-the-Day, we talked about St. Constantine and his mother St. Helen, which was cool because they are a perfect fit with our current history studies, and because I recently read a great book about them. We also updated our science journals and read a story about the moon to continue our learning from our great field trip to the Planetarium on Monday. What a good field trip that was; we all learned a lot about the moon. JPD was especially excited about the moon, and he had lots of fun making the discovery that if he raises his hand, he can have a turn to talk!

JPD has been so much fun lately; he is so curious about so many things, and fascinated with learning about how things work. In addition to the moon, he's really into the can opener, the juicer, and, especially, plumbing. We talked about "where the water goes" when it goes down the bathtub drain, and we got out our all-time favorite Richard Scarry book to study the drawing of how a house is built, with blue and red pipes for the hot and cold water, and green pipes for the "out" water. I wish I could show you the look on his face when he opened the cabinet under the bathroom sink and actually saw the real pipes! He was so thrilled! Here's my little scientist at work in the kitchen sink with lots of gadgets...


So that was today...a pretty good "day in the life," all things considered!