These Celts look battle ready! |
Star Valley Home Educators
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Friday, December 14, 2012
Book Reports and Planning Meeting
Well, 3 of my kids were up most of the night coughing, and no one's said
she's coming, so I'm going to go ahead and cancel this week. The next
one will be Dec. 28th, and if you're interested in the co-op, let's have
a planning meeting after book reports. We'll go upstairs and put on an old
musical for the kids and try to hash out what needs to be done and who's
going to do it (and maybe have some secret Mommy hot cocoa and cookies
while the kids eat popcorn).
Megan
Megan
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Book Report Day
Is anyone planning to come this Friday? I know it's close to Christmas, but we're game if you are.
Megan
Megan
Monday, November 26, 2012
Book Report Day
We had a great time at our first Book Report Day. We hope you'll join us for the next one, this Friday, the 30th at 3:30 at the corner of Muddy String and Dana in the old creamery.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Thanksgiving wishes
Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope all of you have a blessed day with your family and friends!
Monday, November 19, 2012
Great day!
I love days like this!! It's amazing to me when you see a skill that you've been working on a long time "click". B and I have been working on alphabetizing for at least two weeks. Last week we were on vacation so I thought we'd be starting over. She seems to remember it better than she did before the break. This made my whole day!!
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Lessons
My husband and I have been dreaming of
moving to Star Valley for several years now. We're so grateful to be
here and to be living in our dream-home-in-progress, but of all the
people and things we left behind in California, the one I have been
really mourning is our piano teacher. Eve and Sadie have only been
taking lessons for about two years, but their teacher was truly one
in a million. She read music like I read a stop sign, she lived to
play and to teach, she demanded and received excellence from all her
students, and she spent nearly a decade studying piano and musical
education. I knew before we ever left, that even if we could find a
teacher like her in Wyoming, we could never afford her without the
charter school funding we received in California. I asked around in
Thayne, sat in on a lesson, watched the ladies playing in church, and
settled on a teacher for this year. She plays beautifully, the kids
love her, and she is wholeheartedly dedicated to my girls' success at
piano, but I was still pouting a little that I didn't have a virtuoso
to teach my kids piano.
Then Eve and Sadie had their first
recital. Their teacher has only been in the Valley for a couple of
years, so none of her students are amazingly accomplished. I was
pouting a little more, thinking about the nearly austere formality of
our California recitals, a formality which signaled to parents and
students alike that piano is more than a passing hobby, but serious
brain work, and worthy of our time and effort. Here kids were
crawling under the chairs, some students forgot to bow or announce
themselves (including mine), even the venue was unknown until the
last minute. I'm used to bringing the loud family, but I felt like
we were the staid and boring ones this time, even though we arrived
10 minutes late.
But halfway through the Old McDonald's
and Jingle Bell duets, our teacher and her best friend (who also had
students in this recital), sat down to play “A Child's Prayer,”
together. The music was moving, and watching these two women play
together made me misty eyed. Both of them have young children at
home, they organize the annual Star Valley Music Festival, they sing
in the choir, they play organ and piano at church, they're involved
in their kids' schools, and they participate in community events.
These two are all about their own families, and yet, they somehow
find time to serve my family too. These are the role models I want
my girls to emulate. I want all my kids to pursue excellence in
music as in the rest of their education, but I want them to have
their priorities straight like their teacher, Angela, and her
colleague, Cecily. These women put family first, and they still make
time for music and their community. They are living proof that you
can practice every day and work hard on your recital piece and still
bring your cat in a box and let your kids play under the chairs.
These are women who know that substance is a higher object than form,
that it's better to jettison ancillaries like formality than to give
short shrift to the important work of family, music and community. I
want my kids to learn these lessons from Angela, because they're just
as important as scales.
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