Team Gray!

My father sidled next to me on his last visit. He stage-whispered into my ear that he’d like to someday come over and catch Esteban or Joy–on piano.

My father was my first piano student, back in the 70s. We had managed to hobble together a simple duet from my Music Tree book 1.

There’s no way he could do Suzuki. Suzuki depends on and develops playing by ear. My father, nearly deaf, has a tin ear to boot. It was excruciating trying to teach him piano when we were both much younger. I can’t imagine trying to do it today, even though he wears hearing aids.

I also didn’t want to tell him that he’d be better off setting his sites on catching the 4 year old. Chanya is learning (her twinkles), the first piece in Suzuki book 1, and I can hear her little neural pathways grow each time she practices.

Joy is in book 2, and Esteban is almost finished with book 1.

Imani is in book 3, and practices daily. If you had told me back when she was 3, and taking a LONG time to learn Yes, Jesus Loves Me, I’d have been surprised. I remember asking my sister in law out of despair why it took so long for Imani to learn Jesus Loves Me. My sister in law thought Imani wasn’t interested.

Now, 9 years later, I think it had more to do with her brain. Her heart was willing, but her brain and hands had to learn what to do. And, let me tell you, once Imani learned that first song, there has been no stopping her ever since!

I couldn’t figure out how to teach the older children to play piano. I worked on singing in tune and in harmony with them. Yanni can pick her way around the piano when she feels like it. Xay is disinclined.

I wish I’d figured it out with the older kids, because learning the piano is expanding the younger children’s brains daily. I wonder what this will look like in a decade.

I talked with another homeschool mother after spin class Thursday. I had seen her daughter in Zumba class on Monday, and the mother told me that her daughter was required to go to the gym five days a week for her PE requirement.

What a brilliant idea, I thought, knowing what resistance this idea would meet at home. After all, I took my daughters to Zumba with me throughout the summer, and had enrolled them in tennis lessons, and swimming, diving, cheerleading, and Tae Kwon Do.

Throughout the years I’ve done everything from a homeschool gym class to baseball, swimming, basketball, gymnastics, ballet, and tennis to get my kids active. That doesn’t include bike rides and walks, and the two girls who did Girls on the Run.

We spent the fall playing a kickball game in the backyard 4-5 days a week. It was in the 50s yesterday, our field covered with leaves, and I know the kickball days are numbered.

So it was right on time to hear another mother’s gym solution. I want to look more into getting the family together on the tennis courts this winter.

And some are on various sports teams. What is your gym solution?

Nerd Alert: I may be wading deep in the weeds with this post. Bear with me as I work through my anal issues of education in this post.

My youngest child is of preschool age this year. Some may call it pre-K, whatever, she’s too young for school, and formal education and all that.

But for social reasons, I signed her up for one little class. It’s a non-threatening math class that meets once a week. The other days of the week, I have her working tangram puzzles for math.

I am also teaching her the alphabet.

In her math class, she’s learning numbers. Not what numbers mean, but what they look like on paper. In other words, reading.

Unlike another daughter of mine, this child seems more interested in reading numbers than in reading letters. That’s a good thing, I know.

So why does it bother me so much?

Maybe because I have different ideas about teaching math. I think young children should have lots of hands on activities with manipulatives, games, and really master counting and one-to-one correspondence. I don’t want them getting all hung up on number symbols before they understand that 4 means a group of four objects, not a squiggle on the page.

I am not sure she understands this just yet.

But other than that, I love the class. There are manipulatives galore, adorable children, and very engaged mommies in the room. And she will likely get quite the head start on multiplication, etc. This class did wonders for teaching my youngest son how to add money, for example.

Do you have any educational hangups? How did you overcome them?