Learning about the Orchestra!

We have been so blessed in this season to be homeschooling. Life when your husband is in residency is HECTIC. Jon is working extremely long hours in stressful situations, so all of the family life has been my responsibility. I am so blessed to be able to use the time with my children to homeschool them and help them to learn new things. I am extraordinarily blessed to be using the Mother Goose Time curriculum, as it is so fun for the children!

This month the kids are learning about Sights and Sounds, and this week we learned about the orchestra. My children LOVE music, so anything that involves instruments or music earns their full attention.  One of our favorite days was learning about stringed instruments.

The activities this day were SO FUN! Jonathan and Hope especially loved creating their own violins and pretending to play them for the rest of the evening.

This activity had the kids watching a YouTube video of someone playing violin. I found one of a child playing the violin beautifully, and the kids were ENTHRALLED and inspired.

Another favorite was counting strings! They had so much fun rolling the dice and counting the strings they plucked. I also had Jonathan do a little bit of addition during this section. He was desperate to get all six strings, so we added a couple rolls of the dice so he could pluck all six strings.

My favorite part of the lesson is almost always the "Read Aloud."  This week, MGT included the cutest book about farm animals that wanted to form a blues band. The kids had so much fun reading it and pretending to play the instruments in the book.

Since the letter of the week is "P," one of the activities was to form the letter out of string. To challenge Jonathan a little more, we thought of words that began with the /p/ sound.

The guitar holds a very special place in our family. Jon plays the guitar, and nearly every night our family has music/worship time. Most of the time, it is silly and a way for the kids to get their last bit of energy out before bedtime. It is definitely one of my favorite parts of the day. We did our usual music time on stringed instrument day, and it made me remember some other special videos I have filmed of the kids playing music with their dad. Jonathan even has his own little guitar! Be sure to click the links so you can see our special memories.

Once again, Mother Goose Time hits it out of the park and helped my family and I create wonderful memories!