Snuggle Puppy

 By Sandra Boynton

Boynton does some nice baby books, some of which my kids are crazy about, some of which are funnier to read as an older kid or adult, but there are some real duds, too.  Like this one.

It comes with a CD with music that you listen to while you read the lyrics.

 I can't really be bothered to say a lot about this.  The drawing is pretty lazy.  Most of the book is just colourful text.  The text itself is really, really lazy rhyming.

But, I guess if you like this sort of thing, then whatever.  It's not the worst book I've ever read.

Friday Post - Preschool Music Lessons - The Music Tree

My daughter is tired of listening to me teach students downstairs while she watches television elsewhere.  She's started asking me for lessons.  So I decided to give them to her.  She's three years old.

Now, that's a crazy age to start music lessons at, and normally I wouldn't start a child at this age.  I'd tell the parents to sign them up for a general music class of mostly just singing and dancing and not a lot of real technical learning.  But this is different, because my daughter lives with me.  I can make the lessons 5 minutes long and teach her whenever she's interested, which may be once or twice a week, or may be once every two weeks.  In between lessons, we do what we always do: sing, clap, dance and listen to an eclectic selection of music.

  As far as learning to play the piano goes, I don't have high expectations and I don't worry about teaching new concepts every time we sit down together. We're learning from The Music Tree, because I always start with The Music Tree.  It's flawed, and it requires a lot of personalized modifications, but it's the best option there is for teaching music to really young students using proper notation.

The first half of the book is all pieces on the black notes. Most pieces only have 2 notes going back and forth.  I give her a sticker every time she finishes playing a song.  I waited a month before we graduated from quarter notes to half notes.  She's starting to play the pieces properly and independently, which makes her so proud.

After 65 pages of kiddie pieces, there are a few final pieces on the grand staff, but getting to that point is not so important.  If my daughter learns to do rhythms, interval reading and ear training, that's enough.  We'll wade around in the beginning of the book until I feel like she's ready for that final step.

The biggest problem with the book is pages like this.  It's definitely a book for teachers because it's way too wordy for the kids.  I find that these big pages with all the extra information, which is supposed to prepare students for more difficult music ahead, don't contain enough practice material and aren't age appropriate.  The accompanying work book is a real waste of time except as a fun colouring book for kids who already understand the concepts.

Furthermore, a three year old can't move their fingers independently, and four year olds aren't much better.  I've had eight year olds who really struggle with good posture and finger independence.  So the idea that they would play hands together at age 4 is pretty presumptuous.

As a book for older kids, "Time To Begin" fails completely.  It's so boring.  Five pages in and a 5 year old is ready to quit.

Halfway through this book I'll probably skip to something else.  Probably Music for Little Mozarts, if only for the colouring and activity books.  I have a giant grand staff mat that I made for group classes long ago, and we'll learn to sight sing with it.  I also have so many great little music books from the thrift store, too, that we can bounce around a fair bit until she's ready to learn to find and play white notes.  That way she doesn't have to progress at all and she can still feel like she's actually playing music from a book like her mama.

Over the Hills and Far Away

 By Chris Conover

This is exactly the kind of book that I would like to write.  It's a traditional nursery rhyme illustrated stanza by stanza with gorgeous and engaging pictures.

The final two pages have an arrangement of the melody with some accompaniment.

Changes I would make are that the melody should have been present in some manner on the main pages so that I could sight sing as I read (maybe even with chords so that I can play guitar and read it.)  The arrangement at the end seemed a little iffy for piano.  It would have been nice if it had been an early/intermediate level piano piece for a young student.

All in all, it's pretty great, though.

Friday Post - Whistlefritz Program

So, we took out the "Dedans Dehors" DVD by Whistlefritz and it's pretty great.  I've had such bad luck with French DVD's for kids, but this basically met all my needs.

It isn't perfect.  The animation is pretty cheap, but at least they didn't try to make it 3D.  The acting is so hokey, but my daughter really enjoys all the fake laughter for some reason, and even mimics the French lady's laugh.  The songs are okay: not inspired, but actually mildly educational.

The big difference between this program and any other DVD we've seen is that it focuses on some basic concepts, has a lot of repetition, and works the concepts and needed repetition into a narrative.  It's methodical, so that by the time you're finished a video, especially if you've seen it a couple of times, you can come up with a few sentences.

For instance, they count cookies.  Every time the lady counts the cookies, one of the kids steals one, and she ends up counting to a different number.  So she repeats the counting, she repeats the phrase "Where is the cookie", and she also talks about how they are eating the cookies, so that the whole segment ties into other segments about eating.



I really can't stand watching it because of the dreadful acting.  My daughter has seen it 3 times and excitedly brings it up in conversation randomly.  When I ask her what they're saying on the video she says, "I don't know..." in her far away voice and with a grin on her face, because she is too embarrassed to talk about it.  A little frustrating, but a little cute.

There are only two French videos made so far.  I hope they make more and that the library stocks them.  I wouldn't say that you could learn French watching them, but they're incredibly useful for supplementing haphazard French learning at home.

Friday Post - Canadian Alphabet

We make a point of always pronouncing Z as "zed" in our house, because that's the British/Canadian way.  We were delighted to find that even some of the educational toys that we were given do that.  It almost makes up for how bad the songs and recordings on them are.

In order to continue the rhyme to the end of the song, and also confuse our children, we often make up our own endings.  They include, but are not limited to:

"Now I know my alphabet, and it's time to go to bed."

"Now I know my alphabet.  Let's sing something else instead."

"That's the whole darn alphabet.  Do you think you've learned it yet?"

Mama Don't Allow

 By Thacher Hurd

This is a pretty good story that my two year old could follow with a little bit of translation.  The alligators threaten to eat the main characters in the middle of the book, which might be a bit scary (I don't think she really understood that part at first) but they don't get away with it.  This book hasn't resulted in any nightmares.

 My husband hates this book because the story is written in typed letters on some pages and in speech bubbles on other pages.  I don't mind, personally.  I kind of like it.  He also hates the art, but I think it's got some great colours.  I like the story a lot, too.

On the last page there are lyrics and notation for the song "Mama Don't Allow", just in case the reader is unfamiliar with the song.  They don't have notation, however, for another song that features in the story: "The Lullaby of Swampland".  I find that annoying.  Particularly because the phrasing is uneven, so it's hard to make up a melody for it that works.  But I do what I can, because I'm a mama and that's my job.