Music

Music has always been central to my life.  I learnt to read music before I could read words.  As a young child I started violin lessons and as a teenager I learnt piano ( my teacher was the woman who wrote Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth).  I love to watch live music and we go to a music festival every year, a tradition that did not stop after the children were born.  I love music of most genres and have an extensive and varied collection that is accessible to the children they often choose what to listen to, although they have a habit of listening to the same thing over and over again often putting it on and then disappearing to another part of the house!

Earlier this year I reviewed our rhythm and made one of our days, a day for music.  This doesn't happen every week but most weeks, Wednesday is focussed on music.  I don't teach my children, it is not our ethos of education to follow that route and I wasn't about to start teaching my children to read music unless they specifically requested me to.  So our day of music has been all about exposure and seeing where this journey took us.  It always delights me when the children take an interest in something and take it off where they want to go with it.  Not least because it means any hard work I have done in research pays off but also because you are never quite sure where you are going and what they will want to do next.

I have already mentioned that we have a fairly extensive music collection which includes pop, rock, lots of folk, hip hop, reggae, dance I could go on, but not much classical.  I wanted to expose them to more classical music as the few pieces we did have they enjoyed but they are mostly on the long side (symphonies).  We already had a recording of the Planet Suite by Holst which I bought when my eldest was learning about Space and the Planets but I wanted some other recordings.  So I bought Peter and the Wolf composed by Prokofiev, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra composed by Britten and The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens to start us off.  They loved all three of these especially the Young Person's Guide.  It was the 100th anniversary of Britten's birth last year and I found a wonderful free app put together as part of the celebrations which includes a video of an orchestra playing the music.  This moved us into conducting and then time signatures, beats in a bar, bars and how all three of these are written down, which then moved us onto written music itself.  They are now in the process of learning what each of the dots mean and how this correlates to a music instrument.  We are using a piano for now but I have also been demonstrating how this works on the violin too.  A recent visit to my parents meant that we came home with a trumpet which I had no idea my parents still had, my eldest has been blasting out notes on a regular basis as he gets to grips with it.  I am so glad that we have a tolerant neighbour (we live in a terraced house) although I am not sure what I will say if either of the children express an interest in learning the drums.........I have also moved all our instruments into one place, they were scattered round the house, and the small ones are now housed in a fabric bucket I made.  I am sure that all of you who are parents know that making things more accessible means that things get played with more!

I found two music societies in our neighbouring towns, both hold short concerts (around an hour) one at lunchtime the other in the evenings.  Sadly I found both these groups just as their programme was coming to end, the concert season seems to be over the winter for each, but we went to a few really good ones including a brass group which went down well.

We have added some Gershwin, Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite, Elgar - Enigma Variations, Paul Mealor - A Tender Light to our listening so far and I will continue to seek out other composers and types of music.  We have also been adding to our collection of the wonderful Putumayo CDs we now have a few of these.  They are compilations of music from around the world and can spark off a journey in themselves, some of their compilations are specifically aimed at children, at the moment their favourites are French Playground and Arabic Groove.   If you have any recommendations of music you or your children enjoy I would love to hear of them!

If you are wanting to introduce music notation to children or learn about it yourself I can really recommend The Music People by Leslie and Angela Carter.  It was a book my mother bought when she was teaching and has passed onto me.  My children love it.

This journey is far from over, it is just starting really and I have no idea where it will take us next......

We have been mainly.......

crazy busy this week, well I have.  I have been meeting myself coming back!

The week started with the end of a folk festival which for me, sadly, fizzled out rather than finishing with a bang.  The headline act had had to pull out due to a bereavement in her family.  Whilst this was disappointing what was more so is the way to was handled by the festival organisers.  We went to the festival with another family.  Both of us have fairly young children and were not staying up until the end of the music each night.  By chance one of us did on Sunday night, so found out through an announcement at the end of the music that there was a change to the programme on the following night.  During the Monday we could not find any information anywhere about what was going on, if we had not heard the announcement the night before we would have been none the wiser until the final concert started at 1pm.  Part of me really wanted to stay to listened to the other bands playing that afternoon, and the other part just wanted to get home knowing that I had a busy week ahead that needed organising.  I have never felt like that at the end of a festival and it has really marred my whole experience of it.  The tickets were not cheap, I will be thinking long and hard about returning for another year.

After a lovely sleep in my own bed the next day was very full.  I had to plan a food menu for the week, write a shopping list, unpack, start packing again, hang up wet camping gear, and go food shopping.  I got in the car and started to drive up the village before I realised that I had a flat tyre, humpf.  I phoned my dh to ask him to come and car swop, it was already quite late in the day and I still had a million and one things that needed doing and there was not room on my list to fit in changing a tyre.  Luckily for me he obliged and we were our way.  Shopping done I started on packing and unpacking at the same time before cooking tea and then driving North to talk to a group who I would be assessing on a d of e gold expedition for four days.  I fell into bed exhausted.

I woke on Wednesday and packed the car and drove North, with my youngest, to meet the group out on the fell.  We found a spot to park the car, packed up a bite to eat and wandered to a good vantage point and waited for them to walk towards us.  We waited and waited and waited, their supervisor arrived and we waited.  Eventually, running very late, they did arrive, very wet and tired the ground it seemed was very hard going with a lot of bogs.  They walked off to their campsite and we drove off to find ours.  We pitched the tent, cooked tea and then drove off to meet the group at their campsite and check they had made it ok, all being well we headed back and fell into bed.

Thursday was a beautiful day, the sun was shining but it was bitterly cold in the wind.  We met with group a couple of times and spent the day, walking a little, eating a picnic, enjoying the views, playing wonderful imaginative games with my youngest, knitting, brewing tea on our little stove and eating cake.  It was an oasis of wonderfulness amongst all the busyness which was filling my head.  The coldness carried on into the night, it was very clear not a cloud in the sky and the moon so large and bright it was like a torch shining into the tent.  We woke the next morning to ice in the tent!

We met with the group once again on Friday morning, another bright sunny but cold day.  Whilst waiting I played the most wonderful game at the instigation of my youngest.  With absolutely no props she announced that I had to come and get in the car as we were going shopping for food for tea.    Shopping done we then went home and cooked tea, ate it at the table and then we washed up the dishes.  This lasted for about ten minutes, we were sat on the edge of a grassy field.  The group arrived soon after and we chatted for a short time before heading on our way, the, to continue their expedition, us to home.  After unpacking yet again and cooking tea I fell into bed really early for a very long sleep.

The weekend marked two days at home with no need to pack up and go anywhere for the first time in days.  I did some washing, took the car to the garage for a service, packed up a tent from the festival which was now dry and hung up another wet one from the last few days.   The best thing was a phonecall from a friend inviting us over to a BBQ, no cooking hurrah!  We said goodbye to daddy who is off overseas until the end of the week and then had to wait in for the d of e group as they were calling at our house for a debrief.  This is to bring the expedition to an end, a review of what they have achieved and for me hand back their signed books.  All done we headed to our friends for a lovely evening.  Sunday I 'celebrated' my
wedding anniversary or perhap I should say I observed the day as my husband was not with me to celebrate. I have a quieter week ahead, I hope!

We have been mainly.......

really busy again this week.

After returning from a weekend climbing and camping late on Sunday afternoon, we unloaded the car to get everything dry for a other trip this week.

We went into the local town for food shopping and a visit to the library as we usually do.  We were also looking for some bowls for camping, we managed to break one over the weekend and needed to replace it.  They were cheap and cheerful so I am surprised that they have lasted as long as they have.  We were not able to find anything suitable.  Looks like one of us will be eating out of the pan!  I spent the rest of the day cooking food to take with us.  The children amused themselves outside playing with a child who lives a few doors down.

The next day we had to forego our play date as we were packing up.  All the wet kit from the weekend was now dry, so it was packed up and put in the car.  We collected stuff from our list from the loft and cupboards all over the house.  For the first time the children helped as they thought it was great fun.  They liked being able to to and find items and put them into the correct box and then tick them off on the list.  We were so efficient that we managed to clean all the downstairs windows and dig up all the potatoes in the garden as well.  I feel sure that if we had asked them to help they would have said no, they just wanted to be part of what we were doing.

On Wednesday.we packed up the clothes and the last few bits of food and headed to stay with friends for a couple of nights.  It was good to catch up with them again.  I visited their local yarn shop and bought three skeins to knit into scarves.  We popped into a local town the following day and had a lovely day exploring it, we found a great park for a picnic which had an amazing playground in it the children loved it.

We headed to a music festival for the weekend on Friday.  We bought our tickets months ago, in April I think.  It certainly feels like months.  We were meeting friends there.  We sat in a very long queue to get to the site, which was due to some traffic lights that allowed about one or two cars to turn right at a time, the same lights caused massive queues for people leaving too at the end of the festival.  Apparently the council will not change the priorities on the lights, perhaps a letter is in order.  We did make it on site in the end, found our friends and pitched our tent.  The site was huge much bigger than any festival site we had been to as a family before.  We were looking forward to a weekend filled with great live music.  We were not disappointed that is until Monday morning.  We woke to find that the headline act who we had been really looking forward to seeing had pulled out.  After that the day seem really flat.  We packed up the tent in the rain and it seemed like the whole festival vibe had changed perhaps it was also the rain which, up and until then had been the odd shower, was more relentless and it was cold.   We journeyed home part way through the last set, it felt like a big anti climax after the previous days.  I am still mulling over why I felt so flat.  Perhaps it is because due to my spectacularly bad planning I am really busy again this week!

Music

We are off to a music festival today and we are all really excited.  We have been going to folk festivals for years before we had a family and have carried on going since the children were born.  They love themtoo.  We try to choose ones the are family friendly and have the camping and music all on one site.

We went to one really locally to us for years but sadly it has stopped now, so we have been trying different ones each year to find one that we would like to attend every year.  Hopefully this will be the one.

We bought the tickets in April which is feels like ages ago, it has come around really quickly.  The programme arrived this week and we have been reading up to find out what is going on.  The weather forecast is for lots of rain which could make it interesting.  I hope it lives up to our expectations.