I have to tell you that I love, love, love music! It literally inspires my moods. I even think in song, but that is another story. :-)
I grew up in a music-filled house. My mother had me taking piano lessons from the age of five and I continued on through high school. I even played the clarinet in my middle school and high school bands. I sang in elementary choirs, youth choirs, and church choirs. So it stands to reason that I would want to fill my home (homeschool) with music.
A while back I attended a lecture on Education is a Life and to this day that experience influences my homeschool goals. One of the take-aways from that day was how music can play a role in our education experience...and our moods. My husband moved a stereo on to the main floor and even set it up so that my phone could play the selections of Pandora throughout the house. Some mornings we are just not awake and so I feel the need to put a little 70's groove in our morning. Other days we are reading and working on more challenging concepts and so we put on our Vitamin String playlist. (Just saw that they made a tribute to Adele album. Love that!) Other times we put on our favorite Praise & Worship songs. I even have a special playlist for Italian-inspired meals. My youngest and I have been known to break out in dance in the middle of the kitchen.
My piano teacher used to always tell me that music tells a story and as musicians we are the storytellers. I love adding our own soundtrack to the story of our everyday. So next time things are feeling stressful, crank up the radio, iPod, Pandora, whatever and let the music inspire your mood!
What's on your playlist?
flow through my mind.
while doing popcorn narration to help create the habit of attention. Seemlessly we transitioned in to math work by working on one math problem. We were asked to think upon the equation and quietly show when we would be able to explain how we solved it. She worked on the board as one student and then another explained their methods. Then she asked us to think deeper about our math problem. We would need to draw how we solved the problem. Math is a thing...an idea. It is not just an unrelated string of numbers. Our minds were growing weary but she had already anticipated that and gave us instruction. We were in a new place and we needed to go outside and explore our surroundings. As we left the room we were asked to find something from outside and bring it back inside. A bowl of trail mix was by the door to provide small sustanance as we ventured out in to nature. We explored, some quicker than others, but we all returned with our little treasures from nature in hand. Upon our return, she read to us the history of our temporary home. We sat absorbed, knowing that she may call upon any of us at any time. Instead she asked us to chose something from what we read and save it to share at home or with a friend. Again, in a quiet manner, our instructions were given. We were to take a moment and draw our piece of nature or possibly even the map from which we live. While we worked music played in the background beckoning us to stay, quietly working, until it was completed. Our mini school day was almost finished but again she asked us to reach in to our mind and recall one more time the story she had read earlier. This time we were to think of pictures, images the story created in our mind's eye. We were to add that to our notebook.
and I can not help but think of one summer and his gentle guidance for me. Being a typical child, I wasn't too concerned with the how I spent my hours and so much of it was blindly wasted in front of the TV. One afternoon my father called me in to his office. At that time he had a built-in bookshelf filled with books behind his desk. There he sat behind his desk surrounded by literature. It is here that one of my life lessons began. In his calm way, he passed me a gold hardback copy of 
, (Education is an atmosphere)? "The child breaths the atmosphere emanating from his parents that of the ideas which rule their own lives." volume 2
Now It's Time to Say Goodbye
11 years ago
