I was very tired last night when I wrote my post and it occurred to me later I had left out something important from yesterday.
Alesia and Michael like to sing, but they naturally sing very off-key. Michael loves music a bit more, I think. He loves to noodle on the piano.
He was singing in the shower last night too, but it was mostly ghoulish caterwauling of "My knee hurts soooooo muuuuuch! Aaaargh! Lalalalala!"
I am the meanest mommy alive because I didn't let him get out of showering due to his scraped knee.
When we were in the car driving home from therapy, Alesia said something in Russian and rolled her R. Russians roll their R's as much as Italians. I teased her by saying something and rolling my R, too, but when I do it I sound more like an insane scotsman. She dissolved in a fit of giggles. I told her about the different voices she has - the high "head" voice, and the lower "chest" voice. I showed her some funny vocal exercises I used to do. More giggles erupted. She tried to do the vocalizing. Giggled a lot.
It occurred to me to see what she could imitate. I told her to imitate me. She did it. Her pitch wasn't right but it wasn't way off. I tried singing different pitches and getting her to tell me which one was higher. She did OK on that. I then tried singing a bar or two of simple songs like Row Row Row Your Boat. She couldn't get close to the right notes. I got an idea.
"Alesia, I am going to sing a phrase, and I want to you mirror me, like you were looking in a mirror, OK? Except do it with your voice. Also, tap out a rythm while you do it."
Alesia has a great sense of rythym. I've always thought she could be a drummer.
I sang "Row Your Boat" and tapped. She sang it and tapped - and was almost totally correct!! We went through some of You Are My Sunshine and By the Light of the Silvery Moon and Please Mr. Postman. As long as she was tapping, and I reminded her to just mirror me, she did fine. It was fascinating.
When I got home, we were all sitting in Mother's room and I showed her what I did with Alesia. We got Michael to do it, too. He has a nice voice. Both kids were delighted.
Mother said "If you could sit down at the piano and work with them you can get them to sing correctly."
She is probably right, but I just seldom have time to sit at the piano these days. I am determined to try and find some time this weekend. I want to keep it fun, though.
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It occurred to me today I have not talked about how Alesia is doing in school. I can go online to a protected website and check her grades. To my immense relief, she is making all A's and B's right now. Here's the breakdown [after almost 3 weeks of school]:
History 84
Spanish 98
Physical Science 86
Int. Design 84
Intro Team Sports 100
Geometry 90.37
World Lit 0 [no grades yet]
She loves Spanish. I have told her it's a valuable language to learn. I wish I knew Spanish. She is good about learning it. Maybe her experience having to learn English has made it easier for her.
Of course, she asks me things about Spanish and I am clueless, unless the word is a cognate of Italian. If someone asks me if I know Spanish - and I actually do know some words besides taco and burrito - the first thing that pops into my head is Hasta la vista, baby!
Yeah, that phrase really impresses everyone.