Thursday, August 21, 2014

Let the music lead you

This last couple of weeks we have hit up our local(tiny!) library and August found a set of books that he loves. They are a bit longer than picture books, but not chapter books either. Each book is about a different person from History and talks about their life and some kind of character trait.

Today we read about Beethoven and giving. Many people invested in his life and music and when he felt like giving up, he persevered and gave back, with his beautiful music. 

Afterward I got on youtube and found a couple songs and I said to lay down, close your eyes and dream about what the music is saying. 

Well, there was no lying down, but there was plenty of imagining! Zade rushed over to me and said, "Mom, I thought of a new word! Musimovie!" They started creating a story of a man in the desert with a turban, sneaking up to a princess' window and trying to capture her. They went in and out of character and multiple characters throughout the music(about 30) minutes, and came up with a pretty good story! Princess, ballroom dancing, sword fights, poison, the antidote, good guy, bad guy, etc. 

I wrote it down as they performed and they loved that even more! I read it back to them and then they chose a couple other symphonies and made up new plots and stories. 

The only input I gave them was to try to think of a completely different story and characters from the one before. 

It was such a fun hour! We haven't delved into Shakespeare yet, but I hope when we do, they will want to reenact the plays! 

We finished our read aloud today also. Ralph Moody's, Little Britches. We all really enjoyed it. There was a lot of great lines from Father to son that I hope sunk into their heads and hearts. 

For the summer we kept things really simple. We wrote out 1, 2, 3 John and the kids read 2 chapter books. Zade read Sign of the Beaver and a magic tree house book and Grace read May B. and the same magic tree house book, Dolphins at Daybreak. I wanted to challenge them to read something a little harder or longer than they have been, but in the end we made a compromise of one hard and one easy. Their reward was a date night with mama. Zade and I saw TMNT, and Grace are going bowling tonight. 

Other learning happened through planting our first garden and reaping the benefits of that. Also, having a garage sale and making change, lots of life lessons and many late nights with great conversations and movie watching. 

We are moving in a week so we haven't started the traditional school year yet. We will move and get settled, spend a good week with long nature walks exploring our new area and then get back to the books. I am looking forward to every part of it! 

I will share more as we get into September what books we will be going through, but for now I just wanted to journal a little of what our summer has consisted of. 


Enjoying the last of it, for soon enough we will be snuggled up with hot chocolate and tea and gazing at the leaves changing and the snow falling. 


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