As many of you know, my sister Emily is doing BYU study abroad at the BYU Jerusalem Center. Since we knew that she would not have time to email everyone about her experiences J.P. and I helped her set up a blog just before she left. She has now put a post up, and I'm proud of her so I want to share her address with all of you! And I'm posting it on my blog page for everyone's future reference. Hopefully if we let her know we read and enjoy it she'll keep posting.
We also helped my mom set one up last night. She's been writing things lately that I think are great, and I keep wanting to tell other people, "go read this that my mom wrote and then you'll understand." The first post she put up is about homeschool and it summarizes a lot of the feelings about why I want to homeschool my kids.
Hopefully they both keep posting, and I'm excited to read both often!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
What I Teach
There are some subjects that if you get me started on them I will probably talk your ear off. Especially if you have a question, they are the subjects that I'm afraid I act like a know-it-all about. Recently in an email to my cousin I went off about homeschooling I then apologized and finished up the email with this sentance, "But I do have a goal to encourage and educate people in my passions: homeschool, music, strings, music theory, and sign language [and yoga.]"
I'm sure I will eventually devote more than a blog entry to each of these, and I know that my opinions still have some room to change on all of them, but to get to know me (and not from my uninformative profile) I think you need to understand my veiws on these subjects. So I'm going to present a paragraph (and only one :) ) on each subject.
Music
This one may be somewhat obvious, with my past blog posts, and since I graduated from college with a music degree and my senior year in high school took 5 out of my 8 classes in music. Mostly I just love music: the challenge, the sounds, the comraderie, the teamwork.
Strings
As a music ed major (which I did not finish) I had to learn to play "the other" instruments, the brass and woodwinds. They're OK, but what really floats my boat is the strings, especially the viola and the bass (yes, I am odd, most people like violin and cello, maybe I just enjoy being different, or at least being good.) Which is one reason why I finally graduated in Music - String Pedagogy. It also has something to do with how much I love teaching and I dislike public schools, but that's for a future paragraph. This love of string pedagogy (or teaching strings) has really hit home in the past year or so as I've had a handful of students. I realize how happy I am when I finish teaching a lesson, or how much I enjoy the challenge of trying to find how to connect with a student, will it be a visual representation, or a kinesthetic sense. And how to get them motivated, excited, and listening. It's like the things I love about music in a new channel.
Music Theory
Anyone who has been a music major will doubt this one. Ask nearly any music major what they're least favorite class is and they will say music theory. But ever since I took my first music theory class at 5 years old, or did theory worksheets with my piano teacher it has been my favorite. Maybe it has something to do with how much I love math or the foundation I was given young. Whatever it is my AP Music Theory Class in high school was wonderful, and we all got 5's (highest marks) on the final test. The only stress I remember having with music theory was when I got to college and I was supposed to take the first theory course even though I'd passed the AP test. I found myself crying in Professor Nielsen's office until he asked me what an f sharp was in the key of C and I said "a French sixth chord." Although it was the wrong answer, with a little prompting I got the right answer and he was impressed that I'd even heard of the first one. So this gift of loving theory is one that I hope to pass on to more children through teaching, and to keep this to one paragraph there will need to be a future post on how I plan to do that.
Homeschool
First of all, I was never homeschooled. My husband was homeschooled for most of his life, with some private schools in there. And at this point my brothers and sisters are as well (I'm the oldest of 7 kids, 4 of them are currently homeschooled.) But the main point of this is I plan to homeschool my kids, even though I don't have kids yet. DH and I have discussed often what our philosophy for homeschooling is, and why we want to homeschool. The interesting thing is that some of it is different than our parents, or others we know that homeschool. But the main point is that we will be homeschooling our kids starting last year (with research, building our philosophies, and our own learning). And I want to share with others and encourage homeschooling, although I feel underqualified at this point, since I have little experience. But I do have experience with public school, and I know that's not what I want for my kids, especially in elementary.
Sign Language
I've been extremely interested in sign language ever since Junior High School, I think it's a beautiful language and I've always wanted to learn more. That's why when I heard about baby sign language it was very interesting to me. So last year I began to research, and I've made a few decisions: It's not as hard as it sounds to use sign language with a baby, its about exposure not teaching. It is exciting and helpful for a family to use sign. An actual signed language should be used instead of a made up language, but it's okay to have some family/home signs if necessary. And part of my children's homeschool will be sign language from the time they're very small, (yes, homeschool starts long before the age of 5).
Yoga
Honestly, this one is mostly for me. I like to do yoga, it makes me feel better. Once I asked one of my yoga teachers if she could ever picture me as a yoga teacher (back to "I love teaching"). She said she could, and I now feel that I could at some point too. But there are a lot of other things that come first (as you can see above). For now, yoga is for me; and my children are welcome to join in. (I'm sure I'll research more on baby and children's yoga, so I can still have yoga and my kids too).
In summary: I love teaching! I'm excited to teach my kids. I'm excited to teach lots of other kids about music and theory. And I hope that through teaching my kids I'll be able to gain the experience and confidence to work with other parents as they teach their kids.
I'm sure I will eventually devote more than a blog entry to each of these, and I know that my opinions still have some room to change on all of them, but to get to know me (and not from my uninformative profile) I think you need to understand my veiws on these subjects. So I'm going to present a paragraph (and only one :) ) on each subject.
Music
This one may be somewhat obvious, with my past blog posts, and since I graduated from college with a music degree and my senior year in high school took 5 out of my 8 classes in music. Mostly I just love music: the challenge, the sounds, the comraderie, the teamwork.
Strings
As a music ed major (which I did not finish) I had to learn to play "the other" instruments, the brass and woodwinds. They're OK, but what really floats my boat is the strings, especially the viola and the bass (yes, I am odd, most people like violin and cello, maybe I just enjoy being different, or at least being good.) Which is one reason why I finally graduated in Music - String Pedagogy. It also has something to do with how much I love teaching and I dislike public schools, but that's for a future paragraph. This love of string pedagogy (or teaching strings) has really hit home in the past year or so as I've had a handful of students. I realize how happy I am when I finish teaching a lesson, or how much I enjoy the challenge of trying to find how to connect with a student, will it be a visual representation, or a kinesthetic sense. And how to get them motivated, excited, and listening. It's like the things I love about music in a new channel.
Music Theory
Anyone who has been a music major will doubt this one. Ask nearly any music major what they're least favorite class is and they will say music theory. But ever since I took my first music theory class at 5 years old, or did theory worksheets with my piano teacher it has been my favorite. Maybe it has something to do with how much I love math or the foundation I was given young. Whatever it is my AP Music Theory Class in high school was wonderful, and we all got 5's (highest marks) on the final test. The only stress I remember having with music theory was when I got to college and I was supposed to take the first theory course even though I'd passed the AP test. I found myself crying in Professor Nielsen's office until he asked me what an f sharp was in the key of C and I said "a French sixth chord." Although it was the wrong answer, with a little prompting I got the right answer and he was impressed that I'd even heard of the first one. So this gift of loving theory is one that I hope to pass on to more children through teaching, and to keep this to one paragraph there will need to be a future post on how I plan to do that.
Homeschool
First of all, I was never homeschooled. My husband was homeschooled for most of his life, with some private schools in there. And at this point my brothers and sisters are as well (I'm the oldest of 7 kids, 4 of them are currently homeschooled.) But the main point of this is I plan to homeschool my kids, even though I don't have kids yet. DH and I have discussed often what our philosophy for homeschooling is, and why we want to homeschool. The interesting thing is that some of it is different than our parents, or others we know that homeschool. But the main point is that we will be homeschooling our kids starting last year (with research, building our philosophies, and our own learning). And I want to share with others and encourage homeschooling, although I feel underqualified at this point, since I have little experience. But I do have experience with public school, and I know that's not what I want for my kids, especially in elementary.
Sign Language
I've been extremely interested in sign language ever since Junior High School, I think it's a beautiful language and I've always wanted to learn more. That's why when I heard about baby sign language it was very interesting to me. So last year I began to research, and I've made a few decisions: It's not as hard as it sounds to use sign language with a baby, its about exposure not teaching. It is exciting and helpful for a family to use sign. An actual signed language should be used instead of a made up language, but it's okay to have some family/home signs if necessary. And part of my children's homeschool will be sign language from the time they're very small, (yes, homeschool starts long before the age of 5).
Yoga
Honestly, this one is mostly for me. I like to do yoga, it makes me feel better. Once I asked one of my yoga teachers if she could ever picture me as a yoga teacher (back to "I love teaching"). She said she could, and I now feel that I could at some point too. But there are a lot of other things that come first (as you can see above). For now, yoga is for me; and my children are welcome to join in. (I'm sure I'll research more on baby and children's yoga, so I can still have yoga and my kids too).
In summary: I love teaching! I'm excited to teach my kids. I'm excited to teach lots of other kids about music and theory. And I hope that through teaching my kids I'll be able to gain the experience and confidence to work with other parents as they teach their kids.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
New Years Resolutions
I've never really believed much in New Years Resolutions. I haven't made very many of them in my life, and it always frustrated me a lot to try and think of which thing I wanted to work on for a whole year, and how to remember it, and how to tackle it. So as I went away to college I completely quit making them.
Last year, 2007, was my husband's and my first new years together and I found out that he felt similarly. That was a relief.
Now I'm not saying anything against goal setting. DH and I have weekly planning meetings, and we review our goal sheet at least monthly. But a year seems too long and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about Jan. 1st.
Or is there? As we were talking the evening of 1/1/08 we realized that with my break from school and all our time together we'd been trying to change a lot of things to improve.
A Clean House
The thing I'm most proud of is our new cleaning schedule. In Rexburg we were able to keep our tiny apartment clean by working together 15 min. a day after dinner. I mostly did the dishes and he picked up, swept, vacuumed... whatever needed to be done. Now with this new house/apartment it's been more important to me to keep it clean because we share it with Grandma. But I've been feeling really frustrated because though it's more important to me I was feeling like I couldn't do it, even with a dishwasher now. So we've reinstated the 15 min. except with rotating chores for each day of the week. I know it's not fly-lady quality, but it's progress, and I can tell by the way my house looks and how I feel about it.
Getting in Shape
This is the goal that I feel most sheepish about. I always thought it was kind of dumb that it seemed like everyone set this goal for new years and no one accomplished it. (You can tell by the increased ads for exercise equipment, clothing, and gym memberships.) For me it's more of a goal to actually do yoga, because I love it I just don't do very well at making time for it. The actual impetus for this was the cool yoga DVD I got from my Sister-I.L. for Christmas and the DVD player we got from my Brother-I.L. and Mother-I.L. And the entertainment center to contain all that stuff that I got for my DH. I haven't been doing as well as I wanted to since school started again (except that I lead it for PE with my class at school). But that's the point of why it's not a New Years resolution, it's just a goal that I can set again next week, and re-evaluate next month. But I love my yoga!
Getting up in the Morning
I have to say that this is my fault. My husband was really great at getting up in the mornings until he married me. And it hasn't really improved any with setting a goal. But at least we're thinking about it. LOL
Financial
Our finances have been pretty well in order thanks to my husband's savings, online statements, and the Xcel program that I wrote, but it wasn't quite doing everything that I wanted. So we used an Amazon gift certificate to buy Quicken, and I'm excited and it's fun for me. But I guess that's not really a goal, it's just having in mind the things you want so you don't go blow a gift certificate on something else.
I guess what I'm mostly trying to ramble about is that life is for progression, so if we only focus on improvement once a year, I think we're really missing out on our potential and the joy of developing. But New Years really is a better time than I thought to get excited about changes of our choosing.
Last year, 2007, was my husband's and my first new years together and I found out that he felt similarly. That was a relief.
Now I'm not saying anything against goal setting. DH and I have weekly planning meetings, and we review our goal sheet at least monthly. But a year seems too long and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about Jan. 1st.
Or is there? As we were talking the evening of 1/1/08 we realized that with my break from school and all our time together we'd been trying to change a lot of things to improve.
A Clean House
The thing I'm most proud of is our new cleaning schedule. In Rexburg we were able to keep our tiny apartment clean by working together 15 min. a day after dinner. I mostly did the dishes and he picked up, swept, vacuumed... whatever needed to be done. Now with this new house/apartment it's been more important to me to keep it clean because we share it with Grandma. But I've been feeling really frustrated because though it's more important to me I was feeling like I couldn't do it, even with a dishwasher now. So we've reinstated the 15 min. except with rotating chores for each day of the week. I know it's not fly-lady quality, but it's progress, and I can tell by the way my house looks and how I feel about it.
Getting in Shape
This is the goal that I feel most sheepish about. I always thought it was kind of dumb that it seemed like everyone set this goal for new years and no one accomplished it. (You can tell by the increased ads for exercise equipment, clothing, and gym memberships.) For me it's more of a goal to actually do yoga, because I love it I just don't do very well at making time for it. The actual impetus for this was the cool yoga DVD I got from my Sister-I.L. for Christmas and the DVD player we got from my Brother-I.L. and Mother-I.L. And the entertainment center to contain all that stuff that I got for my DH. I haven't been doing as well as I wanted to since school started again (except that I lead it for PE with my class at school). But that's the point of why it's not a New Years resolution, it's just a goal that I can set again next week, and re-evaluate next month. But I love my yoga!
Getting up in the Morning
I have to say that this is my fault. My husband was really great at getting up in the mornings until he married me. And it hasn't really improved any with setting a goal. But at least we're thinking about it. LOL
Financial
Our finances have been pretty well in order thanks to my husband's savings, online statements, and the Xcel program that I wrote, but it wasn't quite doing everything that I wanted. So we used an Amazon gift certificate to buy Quicken, and I'm excited and it's fun for me. But I guess that's not really a goal, it's just having in mind the things you want so you don't go blow a gift certificate on something else.
I guess what I'm mostly trying to ramble about is that life is for progression, so if we only focus on improvement once a year, I think we're really missing out on our potential and the joy of developing. But New Years really is a better time than I thought to get excited about changes of our choosing.
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