I just wanted to take a quick minute to boast a bit of unschooling success. We do very little structured learning around here. Lots of reading, playing and interacting, but no real curriculum on any sort of regular basis. I've especially not pushed reading. Last night I was reading an ABC book to Evan, Ben has been concerned that he knows is letters verbally but doesn't recognize them. I haven't been concerned, but since we both need to feel comfortable in this journey I made a point to help Evan with letter recognition. As we sat looking at the book and reading, Owen would join in and read words that I had no idea he knew. Next we read a level 2 reader. He's never read a level 1, and I couldn't find one on his shelf (I know we have some though). We were able to take turns reading each page. He could easily read 70-80% of the words with out help. I don't think he even knew he could read as much. He proclaimed in the middle of the book "This is so much fun!!!" How cool is that.
In other learning news both Evan and Emma are making progress in our piano lessons. They are roughly at the same level and both having fun with it. It is definitely more of a struggle for Emma, but she is very determined to move forward. Slow and steady is her pace in life though so I'm not worried. As long as she is content with her pace and wants to continue, we will. I was beginning to wonder if she'd ever get the first note of the first variation of "twinkle twinkle little star". She has shown me that she can and does get it, now we are working on consistently being able to reproduce that bit using each of her fingers on her right hand. Once we get there we'll move forward in the actual song. Evan is doing the same thing, but with him we are working on him playing with a bit more, um, gentleness. He goes at the piano like he does all else- with HUGE energy. That translates to banging out the notes! He too is working on that first bit ("Mississippi Hop Frog" -playing a note for each syllable) on each of his fingers- gently. I think he will soon be ready to move on to the actual song soon. Olivia knows how to sit at rest and bring her hand up to "ready" she will also play a single or doulbe note, every so often she has even done "Mississippi Hop Frog" but that has been very occasional. Owen is flying. Our teacher said that our biggest challenge will be to slow him down. He is roughly two songs behind me in the book. One and a half after this mornings practice. He is doing so well and learns so fast! I only have to play a section/line for him a few times and he will pretty much nail it. If it weren't for the fact that we will be out of the house most of today I'd bet that he'd have "Lightly Row" down pat by days end. Since we'll be gone and he won't have all day to go back and forth piddling on it I'm gonna put my money on tomorrow afternoon. It is fun to watch him learn and play, I'll have to grab his MP3 player and upload one of the recordings he made of himself with it. Very cute.
Ok Well, I'd love to write some more, but I have to get me some breakfast and then get our crowd ready to head out for the day. We are going to a symphony performance for kids. After that we are going to head out to our regular park day. I'm hoping the winds don't kick back up- they were blowing upwards of 40 -50 mph last night- news reports saying gust of 60. It's supposed to be blowing around 20-30 mph today.... we'll see. The park we go to is in the foothills which tends to be a bit more windy.