Hearing Voices Continued

So, Terry ended up taking two voice lessons with our fabulous music teacher. I can hear a change in his voice with just that amount of instruction. Here's one piece that he worked on to sing in church. Pay no attention to the awful pianist. She tries, but then she gets nervous. haha.

I had to embed it. I guess I have some homework to do to figure out how to upload videos to the blog again. 

Fall Recital

We only had two participating in the fall recital this year. Both kids did great. As you probably already realize, Alana takes lessons not so much to become a great pianist, but for the therapy. Working the brain to read the notes, process the information, stay focused on where she is in the music, and get it all out to her fingers has been quite a challenge for her. She is doing very well with it. Beyond what I expected. We're proud of her hard work. Nate continues to do well even with so much on his plate. High School is a busy time in a young person's life. We are glad that he is still sticking with it. My videos won't upload here. Not sure why. I will put them on Facebook. :)

 Waiting to begin

 Certificates.

The Trouble with Multiplication

Recently, Alana's multiplication problems have been getting harder and longer. She seems to get lost somewhere in the middle and forget to multiply by some of the digits.  The understanding is there, though. So, taking my knowledge about dyslexic learners and my research involving the Orton Gillingham methods, this is what I came up with.
A hands on multiplication center.

 Taking some old number cards that I still had laying around and then adding some more made of 4/6 cards cut in half, I set up a problem. Alana uses the cards to solve the problem, renaming etc. as she goes. I also cut some strips of black construction paper and some smaller pieces for her to use to make her symbols and lines.

 Once she is finished multiplying in the ones place, she turns over that card and follows the same procedure once she is done with the tens place, and the hundreds place.

 This seems to help her focus on where she is within the problem and what she needs to do next.

The final addition line may not be added until the number of digits being multiplied matches the number of rows to be added. After several problems this way, I switched to doing a few problems on graph paper and WAALAA, she is now able to get her multiplication problems correct. This method apparently worked to help her process the whole thing. Interesting the way different kid's brains work, isn't it?

Hearing Voices

Our family has enjoyed, in years past , taking music lessons from our friend Mike Drinkwater. Mikayla and Nathanael starting taking piano from him way back when they were 8 and 10 years old. A few years later, Mikayla started flute lessons with him and Nathanael started trumpet. Then, Alana started taking piano from him. She was more of a challenge to teach, and we weren't sure that it would be possible. But he worked so well with her, that she has been able to make it through several beginning piano books. In more recent years, he noticed that Alana had/has a very strong voice and encouraged her to take voice from him. She was horribly embarrassed to sing in front of him and take direction from him at first, but now it's old hat, and she loves it. We love hearing her voice from her upstairs bedroom as she practices with the tapes that he records for her to sing with.  Mikayla also added voice and learned enough from him in the brief time that she took from him to be recognized at school and given private lessons whenever they could fit one in. We loved hearing how far see she had come when she landed the lead in the operetta, The Mikado, while attending Dublin.   Now, she has made voice performance her major in college. We have thought of having Nathanael add some voice lessons to his already busy schedule, too, because lately, his voice has finished it's adolescent squawking, and we have heard a clear, strong bass coming from him during the singing at church. THRILLING to this Mama!

So, knowing what a wonderful teacher he is, I had an idea. It struck spur of the moment. Alana had caught one of her hacking colds and couldn't make it to her regularly scheduled lesson. Nathanael also had something else that interfered, so he couldn't take the time slot either. We like to take our scheduled time because we pay for a full month. If someone can't make it, we switch around so we don't lose that time. Ok, so, not wanting to lose the time slot that we paid for...I suggested to my husband that he and I go and get Mike to practice with us for our upcoming special music for church. Mike, a member of our church, could then accompany us on Sunday. Perfect idea. Terry was all for it. So, I started looking through music, picked one for us to sing together, but also found one that I would like to work on for the future. I was playing it and trying to sing it. It took me a minute to figure out why I was having a bit of trouble with it. It was written for a tenor. A guy's piece. HMMMM. Well, people really don't realize what an awesome voice my husband has. He has never had the opportunity to hone his gift, however, so he doesn't sing a lot. He has a beautiful voice.
Well, I conjolled and begged and  finally he agreed to give it a try with me plunking out the melody. Then, it was time to head out to Mike's for our "lesson". I conveniently included the music that we had just tried, convinced that Mike would be able to get him to sing it. We went over our duet and in no time had it ready to go. Soooo, what shall we do with the rest of our lesson time? Oh, look I just found this music. Think you could teach Terry a thing or two about singing this? Haha. Mike got right into it and Terry had a wonderful voice lesson then and there. Our favorite music teacher declared at the end that Terry needed regular voice lessons since he had a gift. Mike says that he has long heard his voice, and has wanted to give him lessons for a long time now. So, who knows. I might be hearing Terry's voice practicing warm ups and pieces soon. I, for one, am excited about the possibility!