Why do I have a points system with my students?

There is a very careful rationale behind my decision to award points for practice & achievement in my child students. It's all about the psychology behind it. For those who have 'got it' the results are wonderful!

All of my young students are assigned to a particular 'House' or team. The names of the houses are related to the cute animals or creatures from the Harry Potter stories. This is simply because its relevant to most of our children - they can relate to it. For the tiny ones who haven't heard of Harry Potter yet, I have carefully placed them in the house of the cute fluffy magic cat, or the wise brave owl. So they relate to the animal & it's positive qualities.

What Predicts Future Success For Our Children?

If there were a way to predict how successful our children were going to be in adulthood, what would you be looking for as a predictor? As we rear our children we often take a ‘best-guess’ approach. That is often influenced by our own upbringing – we either do the same, or the opposite of what our parents did. Our love for our kids often makes the choices more blurry. We want our kids to succeed, we want to protect them from harm & pain, we want to stop them from making the same mistakes we did. That often leads to us then sighing about how ‘naive’ they are to the world.

Check out my latest post on my new Counselling Blog.

http://ellamentarycounselling.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/what-predicts-success-in-our-kids/

Tip-Toe Mouse

I love teaching Elissa Milne's P Plate Piano music! The AMEB books are so beautiful & fun! Renee & Alice are having so much fun learning the Tip-Toe Mouse & the Tango for Starters! In the Tip-Toe Mouse it's cute helping them to learn how to articulate each hand differently. The left hand is the 'baby mouse' cos it hops, whereas the right hand is the 'grandpa mouse' cos he creeps slower than the baby. Both little girls are getting so much joy from learning this music & they have no idea that they are learning quite tricky technical skills at the same time!
The Tango for Starters is the same. With the little ones, we make up a little song to help with the quite tricky syncopated rhythm.
The Galway Piper is also fun but challenging!
All 3 pieces have a common element, which is their sound. They have the feel of a fun dance, which the children love. They also have a sense of humour in their sound, which helps in teaching skills.
Have had a funny arvo yesterday with Renee & an even funnier morning with Alice today!

History of the term (anacrusis)

The term “anakrousis” was used by the ancient Greeks for metrical poetry in cases where the first syllable of a poem (or the first few syllables) was not accented. The word combines two Greek words: ana- “back” and krouein “to strike.” For the Greeks, starting a poem that way felt like pushing or “striking” a ship back from the dock on the start of a voyage (they spent a lot of time on boats, what with all those islands!). Later the word was respelled in Latin as anacrusis, and musicians applied the poetic term to music.

First Day of Spring

Today is the first day of Spring!

I celebrated by making up a quick & easy version of a little Spring Song that I remember from my infancy. It is so lovely that it has stayed with me for life. It's been in my head for the last couple of weeks so I hope that it brings a smile to your face. :)))