Skip to main content

Music all around us (After school classes - part 4)


The fourth part of our family's after school experience is going to be about music education.

In Taiwan it seems that all children at one point of time take music classes. Usually they learn to play piano or violin, there are also those who go for percussion lessons or to a choir. Kids start early, at 4 or 5 years old. So it's not surprising that under some pressure from people aroud us our daughter has also started her music education quite early.

When we moved to Taiwan, Zosia has just turned 4 years old. Grandparents and aunts wanted her to start playing piano and so we signed her up for classes at one of the big-piano-teaching-chain-schools. Piano lessons were taught in a group setting, there was no way for the teacher to know who follows the lesson and who doesn't. Zosia's Chinese was not very good at that time so she had problems understanding the lessons. It was a real struggle, she didn't like it, I didn't like it, she didn't like practicing at home and I didn't like making her practice. Needless to say she didn't stay at that school very long. 

Soon after we found a small music class run by Connie Wang 王淑姿老師. Music in that class was taught with Kodaly method - voice was the first instrument to work with. Zosia has always loved singing and this class was letting her use her voice in a special way. She has completed all 8 years of classes at Kodaly. 

Beside singing in Kodaly, children also learn how to play recorder, read and compose music. They can also choose instrument classes. At the age of 6 Zosia started taking piano lessons. Practicing at home was a struggle and without practice there was no improvement. We didn't want to push her so after less than half a year we stopped the lessons.
Thinking that she became more mature and ready to take on an instrument, at 7 years old she tried to take piano lessons again - there still was no way that we could make her practice at home. It was obvious that playing and instrument is out of question for Zosia. Now Zosia can sing and can play by ear, but can not really play piano.

Jas started his music education very early, when he was still a toddler, he went to Mama Mia 親子館 (now Ania is also going there). It is a great place to start teaching your little one how to enjoy and make music. What makes it different to some other classes is that it is bilingual - Chinese-English. And the teachers are great!
After he finished his classes at Mama Mia it was time to decide what's next - should he go to Kodaly like Zosia did or should we find something different for him. Thanks to another homeschooling family we've found a very nice little music class for Jas. 

He started taking piano and music lessons with teacher Lin 林老師 when he was 5 years old. From day one he did not have problems practicing at home. There are of course times that he doesn't like a certain piece of music he is learning and doesn't want to practice it, but that doesn't happen very often. 

Over a year ago, Jas started taking saxophone lessons. He's doing great playing this instrument, he can play anything he hears, but ... is not enjoying playing the pieces that teacher gives him to practice.  Well ... I guess he just wants to jazz.

As you can see, we let our kids choose, we listen to them and don't push them to doing things they do not enjoy. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Animals Classification Lapbook

Last week Jaś has been very busy working on the animal classification lapbook. Lately it's been very difficult to get him interested in doing any kind of project, but to my surprise he has finished this lapbook in just a few days! I am really proud of him. I used a ready lapbook template from the wonderful Homeschool Share website, but I asked Jaś to writ all the information in his own handwriting instead of just printing the prepared text. Here are the photos of his lapbook: Jaś adding the finishing touches to the lapbook cover: Lapbook cover: The inside of the lapbook: Inside 'Classifying Living Things ': Animals with and without backbones are called:  Inside 'What are the four main Invertebrate Classes?': Inside 'What are the five Vertebrate Classes?': Mollusk characteristics Annelid characteristics: Arthropod characteristics: Echinoderm characteristics: Fish characteristics: Reptile char

Czworokąty - lapbook

Niedawno pisałam o Jasia lapbooku o TRÓJKĄTACH . Teraz czas na pokazanie naszego lapbooka o CZWOROKĄTACH.  Praca w toku Już prawie gotowy Strona tytułowa Kilka słów o trapezach Równoległoboki I na koniec - prostokąty i kwadraty Taka forma uporządkowania wiadomości geometrycznych bardzo Jaśkowi odpowiada. Wszystko jest przedstawione jasno i przejrzyście. No i zawsze można wrócić do takiego lapbooka, otworzyć go i przypomnieć sobie co nie co.

Skąd się bierze 13-ty miesiąc w roku?

Tak zwany kalendarz chiński jest kalendarzem księżycowo-słonecznym, gdyż jest oparty na ruchu księżyca i słońca. Często jest też nazywany kalendarzem księżycowym, kalendarzem rolniczym 農曆 [nónglì] , kalendarzem Yin 陰曆 [yīnlì] lub też starym kalendarzem 舊曆 [jiùlì]. Czy wiecie, że czasami w kalendarzu księżycowym jest 13 miesięcy? I właśnie w tym roku będziemy mieć taką sytuację. Miesiąc to czas pełnego obrotu Księżyca wokół Ziemi. Księżyc okrąża Ziemię w ciągu 27,3 dnia. Z kolei Ziemia okrąża Słońce w 365 dób, 5 godzin, 48 minut i 46 sekund. Po obliczeniach okazuje się, że jeden rok słoneczny równa się 12 7/19 miesiąca księżycowego lub też 19 lat słonecznych równa się 235 miesiącom księżycowym. Jest to podstawa kalendarza księżycowo-słonecznego, a więc również kalendarza chińskiego. Innymi słowy: Chiński kalendarz opiera się na fazach księżyca. Miesiące chińskie zaczynają się od nowiu i pełnia księżyca wypada 15 dnia miesiąca. Ponieważ nów jest co 29½ dnia, chińskie miesiące kale