Just a quick story to share today…
I was teaching my homeschool music class this morning, and we started learning about Franz Liszt today. After talking about his life, I played this YouTube video of Evgeny Kissin playing a Liszt etude to listen to as they colored a picture of Liszt. As usual, I had to explain that the performer they saw in the video was not Liszt because they did not have video cameras back then.
Then the oldest boy (8) asked, “What are those fancy letters at the beginning of the video?” I quickly answered, “I think those are Chinese letters, because this recital probably took place in China.” My student thought about that for a moment, and then said, “That makes sense, because most things are made in China.” 🙂
Afterwards, I realized that the letters are probably actually Japanese since under the YouTube video it states that the recital took place in Toyko. Regardless, I thought this was a cute story to share.
From the mouths of babes! How funny.
Trying to help a very young student choose a song to play for our upcoming Christmas recital, I suggested, “Would you like to play The First Noel?” He paused, and thoughtfully replied, “Well, how about if I play the Second one instead?”
Love this! 🙂
Hello Joy,
I am about to graduate with my MM in piano performance from the University of Michigan and am doing the job search. 🙂 I have thought about teaching music classes to homeschoolers, and saw in your blog post here that you do that. Could you email me or refer me to an earlier post where you talk about how you structure your classes, what you you teach, etc? thanks!
Hi Michal,
I teach the homeschool class at my in-home studio. I recruited the students myself, mostly using an online forum that the homeschoolers in my area use. My class is considered to be a music history class (we don’t really learn to play the piano much, because of the range of abilities in the class — some are taking lessons and some never have). I use the lapbook curriculum I created that is available for sale in my shop on this website. We also doing listening activities where we listen for high/low sounds, forte/piano sounds, fast/slow tempi, etc.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have more questions.