Music and Movement

In addition to having had a brief case of flu and getting over it, I’ve been getting ready to teach preschool and toddler music and movement classes that started last Monday and Tuesday. Every time I’m in the middle of writing out curricula half of me wonders WHAT I am doing tackling this massive project again, and the other half of me is thrilled to be using my brain and coming up with fun ideas for class, typing them into my computer and creating, creating, creating. Then, when the curriculum for each class is ready to go and I’ve printed everything out, recorded the CD’s and burned them for the students there is the much, much worse problem of making my house look presentable enough for kids and parents to walk through my living room and kitchen and down to my basement.

I know I’ve alluded to the fact that I am not a clean freak before, but when I am in the middle of writing something, I really get messy. Luckily, I’m able to put everything aside and spread out all my junk and really focus on what I’m doing each night, but unluckily, sometime along the line I do have to clean everything up along with all the other housekeeping duties that I’ve let slide. I can’t help it. I’m a piler. Clutter finds me no matter what I do and how hard I try. So, on Sunday night last week I spent about 10 hours into the very early morning putting my house back together. I didn’t even get to the 7 baskets of weekly laundry that I needed to fold. I hid those in the basement bathroom. And this will probably be the story of my life for the next eight weeks on Sunday nights.

Anyway, I am really excited about the two classes this winter. The toddlers are going to be singing and dancing to music about life in their homes. The music centers around cooking, cleaning, having company, pets, shoveling snow, etc. The Preschoolers are going to be doing a lot of pretending. They are riding horses to The West, climbing mountains, making friends with dragons, meeting princesses, and traveling to outer space. I’m going to demonstrate the trumpet to them (I knew there was a reason I picked one of those up at a garage sale last summer) and we’re going to learn about how brass instruments were used to announce royalty in the middle ages. I am especially excited that the preschoolers are going to be doing many music-based art and writing projects in and out of class to go along with the themes we’re working on. I love the things that they come up with and bring back to class to share.