Maia (5 years old) and Camelia

Today’s post is about a one missing tooth, happy little "cat" and her boogie dance, about more sight-reading (with P2), a new piano key guessing game and the Base Staff Puzzle School.

A. With no further talking, here is Maia’s sight-reading collage (Can Can, Bridal Chorus, Egyptian Dance, Symphony no.1):



B. Her latest score in the Base Staff Puzzle is 268 points in 5:36 minutes.



C. I printed and laminated the highlighted key flashcards. In the video below, Maia sees them for the first time:



D. We played, for the first time, a boogie song and we enjoyed it so much!
Here is Maia interpreting “Cat Boogie” and sending Hellene kisses:



Happy learning everyone!

Thank you so, so much, dear Hellene, for the suggestions and advice!
Maia send hugs and kisses!

Hello, everyone!
1. Although, at the beginning, she found it difficult to play “Cat Boogie” with the teaching video, Maia finally managed to do it:



And this is a better interpretation (I hope) of the above mentioned piece:



2. I was so happy to see how quickly she learns to play the Do-Major:



3. For the music interpretation section, this week we studied a magnificent book, called “Listen to the Birds”. It is an introduction to classical music, written by Ana Gerhard, and illustrated by Cecilia Varela, and accompanied by a CD containing 20 excerpts from different recordings performed by world-class luminaries including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Toronto Chamber Orchestra.



I quote from the book:
Throughout history, birds have caught the imagination of composers and inspired their creativity. Works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, and others introduce children to classical music through the discovery of the melodious similarities between notes produced by instruments such as flute, the organ, and the harpsichord and the birds’ songs. In addition to lovely illustrations, the book features a glossary of musical terms, a short biography of each composer, and a brief description of each bird evoked or mentioned in the composition.



Make your own impressions about the book visiting this site, where you can read all the stories and listen to all the tracks: www.thesecretmountain.com/node/1524 .
Since we plan to begin studying Mozart, I was so happy to find in “Listen to the Birds” three works of him!
Maia got so, so excited about this book, that I designed cards with all the birds mentioned in it. She can now match the music she hears with the bird cards.





You can download them from here: docs.google.com/file/d/0ByW769RKGiaWb3VxSFhSbVg3akU/edit

4. We have also approached “Old Woman in a Shoe”.
This is Maia sight-reading (right hand):



5. I wasn’t joking when I said that Maia knew “Largo” by heart. Seeing little Dominic writing a music dictation on “Ode of Joy”, I wondered if Maia would like to try this exercise, too.
To my surprise, she adores “the game” and seems to really know the treble staff (although she still tends to cram the notes, to write them too close to each other):



You can download the file with the keys from here: docs.google.com/file/d/0ByW769RKGiaWM2dyY0NjeXVuRE0/edit

We even took “Largo” out, and she wrote the music dictation with chalk, on the sidewalk:



6. For everyone interested, I also have a suggestion on learning the rhythm in music. When Maia was 3 and a half years old she learnt it this way:



If you are interested in these cards I designed, you can download them from here: docs.google.com/file/d/0ByW769RKGiaWTzhUdEZSZjhjNm8/edit
After learning them inside the house we took the game out. With a piece of chalk, I drew a big circle, full of symbols, and she began running on it, singing.
Whenever I would say “Stop!” she would clap and stomp her feet, saying ta, ti-ti, tiki-tiki or stay still and silent for “rest”:



Have a nice weekend and happy learning everyone!

Hello, Camelia!
I’m Natalia, Russian music teacher. Excuse my not very well English
I’m so exited about your dairy! You & Maia are great! I see and hear that Maia loves music. I love books that you recommended! I’ve bought some already. Nice outside rhythm game. Thank you for shearing!
Maia writes music dictation very well and she knows rhythm in music. I think she can add rhythm to her dictation very soon. But Maia writes notes too close and she may be confused with rhythm.

I think that you’ve already red it, but just friendly reminder ☺
Hellene wrote:

I asked Rachel to use her index finger to place between the notes at the beginning. Why is that? Kids have tendency to place the skinny notes too close to each other. However, when you have to write any melody down FAST you have to be really generous with the space. Otherwise you won't be able to read and correct what you had just been written.

Here’s the post: softmozart.com/forum/48-summer-curriculu...usic-dictations.html