A Homeschooling Thespian

Today it seems like there is a great amount of emphasis about self-esteem. Schools try to build up their students' self-esteem, books are written about how to help us adults increase our self-esteem, therapists are paid a great deal to improve depressed patients' self-esteem, and doctors can even prescribe pills to boost self-esteem! What if I could tell you about a few sure-fire things that you could add into your curriculum that have been proven to raise children's self-esteem, boost their confidence levels and improve their speaking and listening skills at the same time? Add some drama education into your weekly schedule. Oh, I can hear the groans already. I can't do that! I'm not an actress! My kids wouldn't want to do that! I'm not that outgoing of a person to try that! Well, that's okay. Yes, you can do this. No, you don't have to be an actress. Yes, your kids are going to love this once they try it, and you don't have to be all that outg...

Here's my plan for the week: 1) Introduce Vivaldi through listening to the Classical Kids tape (we did it in the car!). 2) Play Vivaldi's music every morning as they wake up and come down to breakfast. You can hear the entire score by clicking here (There are commercials between movements; you'll have to minimize the page to keep listening to it while you read.) 3) Print out the sonnets Vivaldi wrote to accompany The Four Seasons and let the older children read them (or read them out loud) before you play each section. They can refer back to them as they listen. 4) Listening activity: Have them really listen to The Four Seasons. See if they can point out the musical descriptions (birds chirping, thunderstorms, etc.) while they're listening. 5) Print out this musical activity sheet to do while you listen to "Spring". To integrate Vivaldi's The Four Seasons into your classical curriculum further, you might want to add these suggestions in during the week: S...

Born: March 4, 1678 Venice Died: July 28, 1741 Vienna Antonio Vivaldi was born at a time when Venice was the music capital of Europe. His father Giovanni was a barber and part-time violinist at the famous St. Mark's Cathedral. Antonio, the oldest of nine children, showed exceptional promise on the voilin at an early age, and soon father and son were playing duets on the violin together all over Venice, much like Mozart would do later. In 1693, however, at the age of 15, Antonio entered the seminary to begin his studies toward the priesthood. Evidently he did this with much reluctance, for it was known that he had musical aspirations instead; however, he submitted to probably parental authority, as at that time if there was a priest in the family the education of the younger siblings was free of charge. It was during this time at the seminary that he acquired his nickname the "Red Priest" because of his flaming red hair. It was known that he often excused himself during th...

Here is a great resource to start your children off with Vivaldi. It introduces the life of the composer and his music through the eyes of the young girls he taught in Venice. Very enjoyable! A great CD to listen to in the car while you have a captive audience!! ;)

I just wanted to post on the success so far of my Composer for the Week idea! I've been playing Vivaldi for two days, and the kids really like it ! I am so thrilled! Joseph was even humming along with one of the Concertos as he played on the floor with his toys! Robert commented on how peaceful the house seemed with the music playing in the background! I am so encouraged by this that I just wanted to share. I am definitely going to keep doing this!

I finally got a chance to listen to this entire CD today while driving in my car. This is an incredible lecture by Andrew Pudewa, of the Excellence in Writing Institute. Formerly a violin teacher, he gives a riveting lecture about the impact different types of music create upon plants and mice (citing some of the research I've already posted about in this blog) and its implied neurological effects on humans. You will never listen to music in quite the same way again, I promise! Over and over again, the same theme keeps coming back to me: the profound benefits of playing a musical instrument at a young age, and the advantage of having the right kind of music in your child's environment. Not only can we as parents greatly enhance our child's academic potential, but Mr. Pudewa also goes on to show how listening to good music can have spiritual implications as well . In giving our children a good education, a classical education based on the Trivium, it is important to remember...

Last night as I drove home late from work I was listening, as usual, to Christian radio. I love to drive at night; I always feel as if the darkness is covering the car like a peaceful blanket, hushing the noises of a busy day into gentle stillness. Many things were on my mind as I drove home, and my mind was racing through them as fast as my tires were going on the parkway. And then one song began on the radio, a well-beloved song of praise; and my heart began to melt. Now I have no pretence that I possess a decent singing voice; I am barely able to carry a tune "in a basket", as my grandmother once told me, and this Sunday at mass I was amused to find the little girl in front of me looking over her shoulder at me while singing quite a few times. However, I still love to sing, and sing often (although usually alone)! Why? Because, as one of my ten reasons noted, that music as an art form is capable of expressing the unexpressable, of taking your heart and soul and send...

A friend of mine, who formally taught fifth grade but is now homeschooling, was discussing with me the other day how powerful an effect classical music was in her classroom. She was amazed at how peaceful and calm her classroom was when she started out the day with classical music. Boys especially seemed influenced by it, and she noticed that they seemed to be better behaved and able to concentrate on the mornings she put it on. It got to the point where the children themselves would request the music, and parents started donating more CDs to add to her collection because their children kept telling them how much they liked it at school! It turns out that she was definitely on to something. There have been many scientific experiments that proves that living organisms are most definitely influenced by the sounds in their environment. A group of plants exposed to classical music grew better than another group exposed to rock music; a similar experiment using mice actually had to be cut s...

I am so impressed by our homeschool group's production of Twelfth Night today! Despite the heat and an incredible three hour running length, they put on a fantastic show! It took a few months of rehearsals, I believe, to achieve. The actors had their lines down pat and created believable characters. There were many fine moments in the play, such as between Orsino and Viola, where authentic emotions were happening, and the rollicking humor found between Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby Belch and others had me laughing out loud. Feste was a special delight, a Puck-ish sprite singing and dancing her way across the stage. Bravo to the director, the wardrobe mistresses, the set designer and the actors! Who said that young people don't understand Shakespeare, or that they need thousands of dollars for a theater program? Twelfth Night is a perfect example of how arts education can be added into our homeschools with a little organization and a lot of creativity. And quite a bit of hard...

Yesterday the younger boys were treated to an up-close experience with the media arts. I had been searching for a tour of a television studio, since James (age 11) seems fascinated with technology! A recent trip to our local cable news network definitely piqued his interest, but at that time we were unable to see the studio as some late-breaking news had priority over our tour (imagine that!). Well, thanks to a close friend at one of the three major networks, James and Joseph (age 5) were able to accompany me and an old friend with her two boys into NYC yesterday to be on the set of a new reality show! How exciting! Of course I can't share any details, except we were only used as extras and the show will air sometime during the winter. But the value of the experience for the children was priceless! The boys were so curious about the cameras, mikes and other technology; they especially liked the fact that everyone on set had little walkie-talkies to talk to each other! The P...

You might think these are my ideas because I'm "into" the arts. But hey, it's not just me. Listen to last year's recommendation from the National Association of Secondary School Principals: Theater participation aids students in several areas, including self-expression, self-development, self-understanding, self-esteem, self-discipline, analytical skills, empathy, human understanding, and competition. Balance between academics and the arts is essential if students are to be prepared to live well-rounded, meaningful lives in the coming century. I think the key word there is balance. There must be a balance between academics and the arts. Academics are necessary -- after all, we are home school ers. It's not like I'm all of a sudden going to ditch math and chemistry to concentrate on the arts. However, I'm not just going to "try to get to it" anymore either! Many states now mandate that exposure to all the arts (including dance, art, music ...

Although we're still not quite finished with this year yet, just writing this blog has me starting to think about next year already. And even though this year will begin my tenth year of homeschooling, I still get excited. Each and every year, planning for the next year begins with this same excitement. Thank goodness! And I find that my excitement trickles down to the boys as well. Just knowing now how important arts are in the homeschool curriculum and how integral they are to my children's formation gives me the impetus to make sure they will actually happen next year. Hopefully there will be some sort of a "arts co-op" in our local area by then, perhaps on Fridays; this would certainly be ideal! But even if that never materializes, I will never again push off art & music study to happen just on Friday afternoons. Talk about setting myself up for failure! That's my first goal: set aside time during Mondays to Thursdays for music & art study, or for arts...

Ten Lessons the Arts Teach HT to Elliot Eisner for putting together this list of reasons of what our children are really learning when we expose them to the arts. If you have time you can read the entire presentation here: 1) The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail. 2) The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer. 3) The arts celebrate multiple perspectives . One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world. 4) The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity . Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds. 5) The arts make vivid the...

I hear you. I've said the same thing myself. After all, as homeschooling moms we're responsible for quite a lot: religion, math, science, history, writing, foreign language, English, literature, grammar... it boggles the mind. How on earth can we add on anything else? Are the arts really that necessary? In a word: yes. We're trying to educate the whole child, his mind and his heart. And his soul! I have a major confession to make. I've been in the theatre my whole life, and because I have boys who like sports, math and science and dislike art and music I've largely neglected that part of their education. I haven't pushed them into exploring the arts like I should have. I have encouraged their love of sports (to the extreme, some would say), their love of nature, their love of math and science, always following their lead and helping them, I thought, to become the person that God wanted them to be. I didn't want to impose my interests onto them, and quite ...

One of the first images I looked for when beginning this blog was for a picture of St. Genesius, patron saint of actors. There is supposedly a shrine to St. Genesius at St. Malachy's in Manhattan, venerated by many in the acting community, which I now intend to check out. The legend goes that St. Genesius was a comedian acting in an anti-Christian satire. His character was supposedly sick, lying on the floor. When asked as to what ailed him, he replied that a great weight was pressing on him which he needed to be removed. When asked what was to be done to help him, he requested a "baptism." Thereupon two other actors then entered representing a priest and an exorcist. Genesius spoke his lines to them, explaining that he saw a vision of angels bearing a great book with all his sins inside. The "priest" then asked, "My child, why did you send for me?" At this point supposedly Genesius looked up and actually saw real angels , and requested a real baptism ...

I keep asking myself this. Why, when there's always so many urgent things that constantly demand my attention, would I feel the need to give myself yet another plate to spin? Why? I think it's because I have something to share with other artists, other homeschoolers, other teachers. Because I believe in the value of arts education, and I believe that it should be offered to every child. Because of the passion I feel for the arts, and the exhilaration that a child experiences when he's created something of his very own! God has given us all different gifts, different talents. And He definitely isn't stingy with His gifts either! We each have a multitude, if only we would look deep enough. For whatever reason, this is my gift, my first love for as long as I can remember. And this is what I must share.