There is a National organization called Bluegrass in the Schools that grants money to communities with an interest to further the understanding and exposure of bluegrass music to school kids. Our Durango Bluegrass Meltdown organizes the grant in our town every year in conjunction with the festival and asks for local bands to play in most of the area schools. We were asked to perform this year and allowed us to choose which school to play at. Of course we showed up at Patrick and Aeneas's school.
We played some traditional bluegrass and folk, introduced ourselves along with our instruments, gave them samples of each of them and a history on how they fit into the bluegrass music genre. As soon as the first notes were played, they were clapping to the beat. I wasn't prepared for the shift in the tempo with throngs of clapping children. It was a challenge but we managed to hold it together. The kids seemed to love it.
The boys were talking about it all week leading up to the performance and just saying hello to their classes left them all wide eyed and excited. It was so fun!
We will be playing for the Ignacio schools April 22nd!
Aeneas has been working on a research project to go along with his "Ready Set Grow" unit in Kindergarten. He chose to research the Venus fly trap. He made a list of questions that he wanted to know the answers to, we researched them online and in books and then he wrote a paper about his plant and all the interesting facts he learned about it. We then constructed a little display around the Venus Fly Trap.
We weren't the first family to be given this assignment. I found this blog and got some great ideas about how to craft a Venus Fly Trap out of bottle caps. We set to work painting the pieces, the box, mixing salt dough (and coloring it swamp colored!) for the bottom and forming little flies with Sculpy clay. We then painted the flies and glued everything together. He then arranged all his fly traps in the dough and stuck in some extra swap grass that I got from the floral section at the store. I handled the glue gun but other than that, I simply directed the whole thing and he executed. He even thought to paint the flies eyes red!
All of the kids painted "Explorer Hats" and wore them any time they were working on their projects. They were all very proud of their hats. His class hosted an open house where you could go around to listen to each of the kids give a presentation about their research project and read their papers.
Venus Fly Traps can eat whole frogs and caterpillars and grow in the swaps around Deda's house!
Here are his bottle cap traps up close!
And the creepy fly buzzing around from a fishing line.
The older kids had to go on a scavenger hunt for their eggs.
We have to what?!?
Every younger kid's basket had a number and they could only pick up the eggs with their number on it. They were a little miffed that they had to actually "work" for their eggs. Heaven forbid!
A sweet little old lady from church gives the boys treats (like a lb of solid chocolate and a lb of jelly beans) on Easter. It's the sweetest thing. They boys love it and I'm kind of like, "Whoa!"
Kids played outside while the adults feasted on Broiled Teryaki Salmon over mixed greens with Homemade Carrot Ginger dressing (courtesy of Justin) and Mimosas (courtesy of Kristen).
Found a new favorite take out place. Ever heard of Rice Monkey?!?! Slap yo gramma good!
Pomegranate Martinis
(by the pitcher because who wants to mix drinks all night?)
Easy! 12 oz. vodka, 12 oz pomegranate juice or blend, 4 oz orange liqueur, juice from 2 limes. Get it really cold so you don't have to serve it over ice and you can't shake it.
A serious game of Pandemic. Here is part of the McAlvany
crew trying to save the world from utter disaster .
Fun times with all these crazy boys!
Totally getting in to the game, Declan and Patrick were
determined to save us from a worldwide epidemic.
Jammie time!
Justin caught his little one on the floor in
utter bliss enjoying her cookie to it's last crumb.
Piano is as much of our life every week as skiing is for us in the throws of winter. It's an every day, every week exciting family adventure. Everyone is in lessons except me but with my Sugar Creek rehearsals, I'd say our family is pretty much steeped in music. What a gift that is to me to watch it all unfold before me. Had I listed the dreams for our family 5 years ago, I would have never thought to incorporate music into that and yet here we are.
Aeneas is really taking off and as long as we can get him on songs he likes he will work tirelessly until he gets something. He's the no no nonsense piano player. If he doesn't like it, he's not going to work on it! He's been learning the Star Wars theme song and is looking forward to the LOTR for next week. And's really getting in to making up his own songs like Patrick as well. I think he's pretty proud of himself overall. We are certinly proud of him!
Patrick this week performed in the Student Recital as part of the Bach Festival hosted by 3rd Avenue Arts and held at St. Marks. He was fantastic and although I didn't get his performance on video, I did capture him practicing at the church earlier in the week.
You can see the beautiful Harpsichord that is donated for the festival and Scott the Director of the Festival! The festival hosts live concerts and box lunches over the lunch hour every day this week. Gabrielle, their piano teacher, came to support Patrick with his performance along with a number of our other friends. The sanctuary was standing room only. I've never seen it so packed. Durango has quite a collection of talented little musicians. Watch out world!
Working out the kinks before the concert.
Since we only have a keyboard at home, one of the benefits to living on campus is that there are numerous practice rooms right across the street from us. We went over to the college to practice a few times this last week. It's hard to just go over the same piece again and again so I told Patrick to just play whatever to take a break from the Musette and then we can come back to it. This is what he played, totally new and unknown to me.
My reaction was something like, "Where in the world did that come from?!?"
He says, "I made it up."
"When? I had no idea you were working on something new!"
He says, "Shoot. I should have saved it for your birthday. I've been doing it with the headphones on."
Such great school projects the boys get to do at their school. Earlier in the year, Aeneas and his class studied people and heroes that "stuck to it" to accomplish great things. Aeneas chose E.O. Wilson, a famous entomologist that studies ants and has made huge contributions to science about their behavior. Here is a picture of him on his presentation day dressed up like E.O. along with Neil Armstrong! Parents were invited to a "Talking Statues" exhibit where we walked around the room to each "statue." When we shined our flashlights onto the statues, they came alive and talked about who they were and what they were famous for! Aeneas did a great job!
Last week, Patrick gave a his presentation on his Octopus research. There is a lot of background noise because it was set up like a job fair where parents could go around to each student and listen to what they were presenting. This is real life and sometimes that's messy and loud so it's authentic! (My video was broken when I went to Aeneas's class. Bummer)
Note "Squishy" in the background that he did most of the sewing on. He gets up faithfully to feed it shellfish marbles to him each morning. I wish he had that much dedication to his real fish!
I can't take credit for finding this website that takes Powerpoint Presentations to a whole new level. It was actually one of Justin's students that used this program a few years ago for their presentation on the Louvre for the Innovative month. I've used it a few times since, like this past fall when I put together the presentation for Justin to "sell" his Greece trip. Patrick sat in on Justin's talk one night and when I asked him how he would like to present his 2nd grade research project he knew just what he wanted to do. He wanted Mom to teach him graphic design so he could do a presentation like Daddy's.
It's due next week and I hope to get a live video of him actually giving it but in the meantime, you can see his stellar graphic design skills. He's pretty proud of it.
We are seven sisters joined by marriage. Spanning across six states from the Deep South to the Ozarks to the Rockies. We come together to love and encourage each other. Sharing our lives from crafting, to parenting, cooking, to spirituality. We have a lot to learn from one other. This is our place. These are our lives.
