enrichment

[flea]

Not financial; rather the reverse of financial enrichment.

With Casper about to be 7, I'm thinking about activities. She's asked about dance classes; there are two studios (at least) in town, and they enroll for the school year. Prices are by number of hours a week she attends class, and seem reasonable ($50-100 a month for 1-2 classes a week). There are a few classes on weekends or late enough in the evenings that we could make it work. If she did the classic ballet/tap, we'd have to buy the clothes. There's also a hip-hop class for 5-7 year olds at 6pm one evening that looks cool, though.

I'd really like to get her into a musical instrument, though. I was made to take piano lessons at 6, and hated them, and stubborned my parents into letting me quit within about a month. I also had a slightly longer experience with Suzuki violin at the same age (my main memory being how much it hurt to hold the violin under my chin). I don't think my sister did any instrument, and my brother did trumpet through school for a couple of years and practiced approximately once every 6 months. mr. flea was in the drum corps in school; I'm not sure when he started. But my cousins had music lessons and were pretty serious (my oldest cousin still plays bassoon in an orchestra), and I think a) it's a good skill for a kid, and a kid who is somewhat mathematically-minded and artsy like Casper is likely to have a good experience with music and b) even basic-level lessons as a kid are great if it means you can sit down and play sing-along songs on a piano or guitar for the rest of your life, right? I sort of regret not having that skill, myself.

The Uggaversity has a community music school; they have a piano program for kids that starts at 5 and they have violin and cello starting at 4. It's $800 for the year, payable in installments, with one 30-minute private lesson and one 45-minute group lesson a week. The group lesson is held ebtween 4-6pm on Thursdays, which is kind of a problem, potentially, and I can't find anything on the web site about scheduling the private lesson (maybe more flexible?) The big deal here is, of course, the need for a piano. You can use a keyboard, but it has to be a fancy one, or of course we could obtain an actual piano. Either of these has the potential to be quite a bit costlier than a leotard and ballet slippers.

I dunno, and I should totally be worried about Dillo's birthday, in 10 days and completely unplanned, and not wasting brain cells on this, when sign-ups don't close for another month.

Comments

[sara]

$800/year is v. reasonable for Suzuki -- here it runs about $1200/year plus instrument, although the group lessons are essentially a full half-day of school on Saturdays.

And we have a quite serviceable piano which we bought for $600 (kid violins run about $400 to buy a serviceable one; adult fiddles, you can get something decent in the $6-800 range, and often you can find someone who will loan you one for a year or two and have it for the cost of new strings). If you get to a point where you want instrument-buying advice, holler; I put a lot of mental energy into it relatively recently.

I'm hoping to make enough money consulting this summer to put the boy in Suzuki this fall -- it really didn't take, with his sister, but he has a more methodical personality.

[meara]

I started piano in second grade, ish (when we moved to Indiana). I am very glad I had to take piano, though I hated it at the time (I took it until I started flute, at school, in sixth grade, when you got to choose orchestra, band, or choir). Even though it didn't end up being the instrument i stuck with, it provided a very good base for musical knowledge and for being able to figure out things like that. And I'm glad I have musical knowledge. Um, and stuff. That said, I wish I'd ALSO done dance, since that kind of thing is best picked up as a kid when your body is still able to be molded and is bendy.

[veejane]

I don't think I took formal lessons, although I do think I was the only one who continued picking out tunes on the piano well into adolescence. At which point it became clear that my hands are too small for anything but picking.

(I was the only one who particularly learned to read music, as I recall; that's a mathy skill I bet she'd like. Turn her on to jazz, will you?)

In other news, I am looking at My Local Craigslist, and see an upright Wurlitzer for $200! "Needs some repair."

[flea]

I can read music, thanks to the choir at the Episcopal Church (and its Harvard-professor music director.)

Our neighbor in Durham had piano lessons from a jazz pianist, and it was wonderful for him.

"Needs some repair" is craiglist for "may fall apart when you try to move it." Just as "rod iron" is craigslist for "yes I am functionally illiterate."

[flipbook]

(This is _swallow from lj.)

I've been thinking about this issue myself a lot, which is ludicrous given that I don't have actual children. But my own parents had the ideology and resources to let us pursue arts and other types of enrichment.

Here's what I've concluded at the moment:

* Of my four sisters, only one is still a serious violinist. She is going to a conservatory in the fall. I don't make music as part of my daily life at all, although I enjoy it and it's something I see myself returning to eventually as an adult. But: years of practicing the violin every day, experiencing the framework of weekly lessons with a teacher that expected me to work, and performing in front of a crowd shaped me in ways that are subtle but deep. I am not a particularly disciplined person by nature, but classical music is a very discipline-based practice and I have noticed that when I have something I need to really get done or refine I snap into the habits and strategies of a violinist. I am so glad that I was raised with that backbone in my life... especially since most of the things I've pursued in life have been a matter of refining things that come easily to me, which is NOT really about discipline at all.

* Speaking of something that does NOT come easily to me, however-- ok, obviously I'm biased, but there's dance and gymnastics and then there's TRAPEZE. acrobatics > dance/gymnastics for the random cool factor, and also i feel like there is more strength training and less weird gender stuff/pressure to be thin for girls. although i'm speaking kind of out of pocket. anyway, i think i remember that you are in Athens?? i'll just mention this: http://www.canopystudio.com/classes.htm

[flea]

Yes, the gender deal is my big issue for dance. Casper will always be thin, but she's on track to break 6 feet, so she definitely doesn't have a traditional dancer's body. I'd love to get her into, like, an African dance or crunchy granola movement class (note to self: ask crunchy person you know about this.)

I know a kid and several adults who do Canopy; IIRC it's quite expensive and the kid times don't work with working parents' schedules, but I will look again!

[flea]

Oh, and I should note she already does Tae Kwan Do at after school, which is coed and has good messages about respect and boundaries but also self-defense.

[fatoudust]

Yeah, I definitely agree with this about the discipline factor. I sometimes feel that the most important thing I am teaching when I teach music is discipline. I try to reinforce that message as much as possible, i.e., "Remember when you first started this song/method/chord/technique and you said it was really difficult and you'd never get it? Look at how well you're doing it now. Next time something looks difficult, you can think about this and how you got through to succeed with it." But again, I feel that this comes very much from the student. My (pay) students who are parent driven and not self-driven do not practice nor achieve anything more than the minimum, and thus learn the opposite lesson, "I fail, therefore I am bad." not, "I failed to practice, therefore I am doing badly." Those who love music, even those who are severe discipline problems outside of my classroom, practice and learn and succeed and feel good about it and themselves.

[flea]

I guess I see my role as giving the opportunity to develop that love, and if it develops, paying for the lessons! I certainly won't enforce years of lessons if she doesn't like it, though I think it should be given some time for the self-propelled discipline to develop, with lots of reminders to actually practice. I feel like my parents gave up on me way too soon, though I am sure I was adamant in my refusal to keep going!

Actually, right now I am trending towards piano lessons for ME (and maybe her if she wants them).

[fatoudust]

I studied both from about that age. I loved both music and dance and kept both up for many years. So if it's driven by the student I think it can be successful.

However, personally, I feel that 7 is just a bit too young for instruments, and particularly for classical string instruments like those. I prefer to start teaching students at around 8. And furthermore, I make everyone study piano first. It's visual, and fairly simple as far as motor skills go, and it makes it easier to learn to read music on something that does not also require manual dexterity to achieve the tone, in the way that violin, a fretless instrument, does.

That said, Suzuki specifically is intended for younger children. And in fact, I teach down to age 5 currently, and there is curricula aimed at that age range specifically. If you do start her, Suzuki is the best method for that age (check the teacher's Suzuki credentials. There should be specific Suzuki method training, because it's big on short intervals, kid focused teaching. Just teaching the Suzuki materials without the method is fine, but far less effective.) and Suzuki can be very successful without estranging the kid from music.

OTOH, there are lots of dance options ranging from creative movement to serious dance. At 7, she is right in the right age range for those. Ballet particularly is a very young study and if she's at all serious about it, she needs to be in lessons as soon as possible.

The point is, at this age, I'd say let her do what she's interested in studying. The more she likes it, and is self-driven, the more likely she is to experience success and not to give up and hate the art for a while.

[flea]

Thank you; this is so helpful.