Backtracking

Since this serves somewhat as our family journal, I thought of a few things today that I wanted to record. Because if I don't, I know someday I will be trying to remember exactly how old our kids were when these things happened and won't be able to.

This is a long post and probably too boring for most to read. So I will put this little story at the beginning instead of the end. Because its funny. This happened right before I sat down to type this post. Kelton was in the corner and I realized he had been there for a little while. Actually, I realized as I called him over that I couldn't actually remember why he was there. Oops. So, according to the standart protocol as always, I asked him, "Kelton, why did you have to go to the corner? What did you do?" His response, "Because... I pushed your button." I immediately remembered what he had done--he had opened up my laptop and turned it on. He then got in trouble because he knows he is not supposed to play with my computer and he is not supposed to turn it on, and was sent to the corner. After his response, I did the one thing you are not supposed to do when trying to correct bad behavior... I started laughing. So did Kelton. If only I had remembered what he had done, it might not have caught me so offgaurd to hear him say he went to the corner for "pushing my button."


I started teaching Natalie piano lessons on January 26th. I know the exact date because it is written in her lesson notebook. She was so excited to start. I had kind of showed her some stuff on the piano about a year ago and it was obvious that she wasn't old enough to start lessons. Then in January I had someone call me wanting to see if I could teach lessons to her five year old daughter. I agreed. I had taught five year olds before and knew it could be done, although they don't pick up on things quite as fast as a seven year old, and they take a bit more patience to teach. Since I was going to be teaching someone else's five year old, I figured I might as well teach my own five year old. Plus, Natalie was actually closer to being six than five so I decided she was definitely old enough. Natalie is doing really well. She does spend more time messing around playing whatever she feels like on the piano (a lot of which strains my nerves and ears to the breaking point) but she does play her lesson songs too and I hardly ever have to remind her to practice. Now, a few months later, she still asks every few days if it is time for her new piano lesson. Sadly, she doesn't always get her lesson on the same day each week. I tried that. The problem is, her two little brothers attack when they see her at the piano. They leave my other students alone, but not their sister. And if it happens to be dinnertime, or other stuff needs to get done, her lesson gets moved. It's just the way it is. But we have only missed one week so far. I think that's pretty good. Also, part of the reason I was putting off starting lessons with her was I was afraid that I would have a hard time teaching my own child. I have endless patience for teaching other people's children how to play the piano, but didn't know how that would work out with my own. I'm glad to say that I am able to slip into teacher mode, even with my own child, and not get too frustrated when she doesn't understand something.


As a side note, I now have 6 piano students, including Natalie. Two of those students I haven't starting teaching yet, but they will start in about a week. The first one (Natalie T.) I have been teaching for two years, the second one (Hailey) for one and a half years, and then the other one (Hannah) started at the same time as Natalie. It's funny how two years ago when I started teaching piano again after about a two year break (I had 15 students before Kelton was born) I was ONLY going to take the ONE student. But little by little I have decided that I can handle a few more. Plus, it's easier to take on new students when I already know that the students are good kids. And their parents are friends of mine. Since piano teachers can be hard to find, I do feel a certain obligation to pass on the knowledge I have so that there will still be people who can play the piano. So, here I am with six students. But I think I will keep it at that number for a while.


Moving on to Kelton. Several months ago I realized that he knew most of the letters of the alphabet. This surprised me a bit. I knew he knew some of them but didn't realize he knew so many. Over the next few days I actually started teaching them to him and he quickly learned the rest. He even knows the lowercase letters. Then a few months ago I realized that he knows about half of the sounds the letters make. So I started working with him on learning the ones he didn't know. He quickly picked those up too. So pretty much right at three years old, Kelton knows all the letters of the alphabet, upper and lowercase, and all of their sounds. He doesn't quite have all the sounds of the vowels down though. Just the other day it occured to me that I should probably start to try teaching him to read. Very simple stuff, like CVC words. He might not get it at all. Natalie knew all the letters and sounds for well over a year before she understood how to put them together to read words. So we will see what happens.