Journal entry—lyrics on space

Last night Calvin turned the tables and sang his own bedtime song to Jon. It was somewhat of an improvisation, but then he also was able to repeat it pretty well, and remembered it again this morning, so that became his second journal for this week.

Player. Piano.

He's three pages from finishing the second book. I cannot measure in words the progress that he's made over the past almost year, so I guess we'll have to take another video soon.

The second recital

Or actually the third. Two weeks ago Calvin attended a piano party with the older students of his teacher, Mrs. Faber. The difference between a piano party and a piano recital is the parents, or lack thereof; the piano party was a chance for students to play in a more relaxed setting without the pressure of performing for adults. I was lucky enough to be invited to attend, though, because Calvin was the youngest student by several years. Turns out he didn't need me at all and he had a great time.

So if we don't count the piano party as a recital, then this past weekend, when he played with Jon's students, was Calvin's second official recital performance. All of Jon's students did very well and improvement was noticeable all around. Comparing Calvin's playing in this recital to his playing last June is pretty amazing. Six months ago he was performing mostly with the one finger pick and was just moving into both hands on. This time around he clearly has both hands on the keys in proper playing fashion, is readng musing on the grand staff, and is playing some chorded piano. It's a joy to watch him grow and learn, and even more so because he enjoys it himself. There is a video, but with all teh Christmas goings on we're more than a bit behind in editing and posting, so look for that to be added to this post a bit later.

Piano lessons

Being unschoolers at heart the idea of having a lesson based learning program is not top on our list of things to do, so I was a little skeptical back in March when Jon's bosses wanted to have Calvin on board for the piloting of their still in development preschool piano program. The program included weekly private lessons as well as weekly group lessons. It was of utmost importance to me that Calvin not feel pressured but self motivated to play the piano, but how could we avoid pressure when we're carting him to lessons twice a week at not quite four years old? We opted to give it a try, though, and it turns out that there was little about which to be concerned; not only was the teacher very relaxed about the process, but Calvin was so incredibly motivated that he finished the spring classes well ahead of the actual class and is now already moving into the next lesson book.

I think the greatest moment of the whole experience so far is still the afternoon when I was making lunch, just a few weeks into the class, when I heard coming from our piano in the other room the sound of little hands plunking out a new song, working their way through it until they could play it smoothly all the way through—no guidance, not even any suggestion, necessary, just a pure intrinsic desire to learn and accomplish. His beam of pride and joy at a job well done during his first piano recital today, however, does rank a close second.

When this method is finally released it is going to be a wonderful program for early music education, but I don't suppose I can credit the method entirely with his interest. My guess is that watching and hearing his dad play so beautifully through all these years has had something to do with it, and in true Rousseau fashion I started learning at the same time as Calvin, just to give him a completely different view of an adult "playing" the piano. As an aside, I am using the Piano Adventures Adult beginner method and am finding that to be a wonderful learning experience as well.