Joyschool Finished

This year of Joyschool has proven such a wonderful experience. Not only does it provide meaningful time with my children, it also extends me to others around me. I have loved the experience this year. We focused on the letters of the alphabet and their sounds, numbers up to 10, and various life lessons. Since I plan on doing this again, I am going to write down some of the things I would like to include this year. I think some of the topics we had could be extended to a much larger units, such as
Wellness: stress/destressing, exercise, eating healthy foods, work, play
social skills: Being a peacemaker, sharing/taking turns (play games where we have to share or take turns), table manners, accepting differences, Making new friends, etc....
Safety: emergency preparedness, rules/laws,


One of the things that I would like to change during joyschool is feeling pressure to plan my lesson around the holidays. It felt like there was ALWAYS  a holiday coming up that we were basing our lessons around. I am okay including holidays with our curriculum, but it felt kind of silly like holidays were the only thing we needed to learn about. They are good to know.

I would like to be better at talking about the days of the week and months of the year. Perhaps I will make a fun joyschool calendar to follow. it will have different pictures to represent birthdays and holidays and we can talk about the days of the week and the months of the year as well as things coming up. It would be good for them to get a sens of time. Also with clocks. Maybe always do certain things at certain times and talk about those times. I liked having things open that we could be creative with our teaching and not feel bad if we didn't follow it exactly.

Post Recital

The Recital did prove motivating for everyone. So did the movie theme. Everyone had their pieces down, my son included. Now we are post recital. It is nice to move on to new things, and now I need to figure out what my students still need to learn. Being trained in teaching as well as in piano gives me some needed skills as a piano teacher. However, I have not had any formal training to be a "piano teacher." It leaves me wondering what there still is to learn for myself and what there still is to teach my students. Here are some things I have learned about piano:

1. It is more than technicalities. When you play with feeling, that's when you touch lives, including your own. There are different ways to play. People are disappointed when you accompany an upbeat song really slow and quiet. However, depending on the way you play a song, you can turn an upbeat song into a lullaby. Maybe that would be a fun thing to try. Give each person a simple song to play a specific way (in the manner of the adverb):  peacefully, angrily, happily, sadly, etc....

2. When you accompany someone, you have to be able to follow the singer/conductor. That would be a skill we could work on. They play, but they have to keep their eyes partly on me to follow what I am doing with my hand.

3. Playing the melody louder than the others parts.

Those give me some ideas for the next little while. It's amazing what good a little bit of reflection will do. We can focus on accompaniment skills for a while.

Lots to Reflect On

There have been lots of changes since I last blogged.

The biggest is that my son has started taking piano lessons from my niece. It is crazy seeing a piano lesson from two different perspectives: One: your own child is the one learning. Two: The one you teach is the one teaching. Needless to say, I have had to bite my tongue while I have watched these piano lessons. Is my desire to correct because I want so badly to see my son succeed? Or is it because I think of myself as the expert with the know-how, not my niece? I think there is some of both of that in there. Despite these concerns, I have found valuable qualities in my niece's teaching, and my son is doing just fine. Along with these, I have had a chance to reflect on my own teaching procedures and discovered valuable lessons I have learned throughout the years.

One of my concerns was that my son would not persevere if he did not have enough success playing his songs. His attention span is not that long, and I thought my niece's expectations might be a little bit high. After all, he has had no experience reading notes. (Yes, the concerns of a mother.) I am glad that I didn't tell my niece to just pass off his song. He has been able to reach the expectations of my niece with the diligent help of his teacher as well as his grandmother and parents. 

Motivation really is a continual battle for children when the newness of something has worn off. I didn't know what to do to motivate him. He is very strong-willed and can be difficult to persuade, but my niece and her mother took that concern and found a way to motivate my son. I am so grateful and inspired by their work. They created the cutest practicing chart that involved paw prints and a paw patrol figure reaching his friend in the helicopter. Each time he practiced, he got to color in a paw-print and move the figure. After thirty times, the figure reached his destination, and my son was taken to the dollar store to pick out a toy. Since then, he has had new charts made whenever he has reached his goal, which is usually within a week or two. They have continued to be motivating.

This has led me to think: How can I motivate MY older students? They are older. I have been using candy rewards for every ten times they practice. Candy is always motivating. But to create more intrinsic motivation, perhaps I could plan a recital for them to work up to. Or even create a tradition of a recital every year. I know my second oldest has asked for one. Spring is usually not too busy (aside from school), The theme this year could be movie scores. Another year could be classical pieces. Another theme could be folk songs. I could invite other teachers in my area to join in. It should be a big to-do, Create excitement. It will be fun to hear other pieces underneath each theme. What may be more motivating is the girls own ward  members participating.

There is more to reflect on, but I have a baby to tend to.