the one and only one enrichment for Renzo - Piano

About exactly a year ago, we brought Renzo to Yamaha music school for his very first enrichment class, and 6 months later, we withdrew him from the class due to the fact that the class schedule didn't work out very well for us, and he was not enjoying the lessons due to change of class and teacher.

So this time, on October 06, 2013, we finally manage to send him for his real piano lesson with a private tutor staying near to our place.

I guess many parents have the same questions in mind like us, Yamaha music school or private tutor?

Here's a great read:
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Forum/2/topic/008222/Number/0/site_id/1#import

You have to believe that there's always 2 sides of the coin so there's no real right or wrong. So let me just highlight the cons (skip the pros as I believe people are more concerned about the cons when comes to such kind of thing, LOL) of these 2 options:

Yamaha Music School:
- One parent is required to attend the class together with the kid, for kids aged 4-6 years old , which is definitely time consuming no matter how much we parents love music, or rather say love the bonding with our kids.
- They do not teach  CDEFG, instead they use Do Re Me, there's a huge difference here because under Yamaha,  teachers focus on ear training and music appreciation, and they do not really teach much about how to read the notes, that means if it is a piece of new music, students won't be able to play it right away simply because they could not read the repertoires independently
- Teachers could not focus much on each kid as they have a whole class to take care of, hence bad hand posture and loud playing habit become  more and more common among kids

Private teacher:
- Since parents are not attending the class, we might not get to understand what was taught each time during class
- more expensive?


So the answer is pretty clear, we are getting a private teacher for Renzo!! Don't get me wrong, Yamaha Music School is definitely great, it's just that we prefer a different approach and arrangement for Renzo in this case. And we quickly bought Renzo a new Yamaha U1 piano which makes him, and his didi Rynus super excited!

We are lucky enough to meet this great teacher introduced by my sister. My niece has been attending Yamaha Music School for 2 years but my sister had the exact same concerns like what I listed above, hence she decided to switch her to a private teacher. It's in a way tougher for my niece as she needs to forget about all she's learned under Yamaha, but she managed to adjust quickly and her improvement is so obvious that even I know nothing about piano, I can tell by looking at her videos recorded and sent to my sister by this super caring teacher! That action of recording and sharing class videos from the teacher, addressed the one biggest concern I have with private teacher instantly!

Renzo enjoyed his first lesson, and his strong interest in numbers and alphabets definitely helped as writing / coloring is required for his age, and he could read the lyrics on his own when comes to learning songs. Practicing the song he learned during piano lesson has been added to his daily study routine at night, and it's pretty fun to hear little Renzo asking frequently, "Mummy, did I wash my hands?", that basically means he has just washed his hands and he wants to play piano!

Renzo's Flower Artwork

One year after Renzo's ladybug artwork, I was faced with another challenge (starting to think art pieces is gonna be an annual event for me...). Mummy Chan WhatsApp-ed (is that even a verb?) me a picture a piece of paper with nothing but an outline of a flower and a purple ice-cream stick taped to it (which later i learned from Renzo that it was to be the stem of the flower), I was to think of how to decorate it and have Renzo bring it to his school for his teacher as a teacher's day present the next day.

My immediate idea was to make the flower a 3D one, as opposed to a simple color-pencil/crayon/poster color painting. And with 3D looks, there were a few ways to achieve it.

• get clay or plasticine and mold a flower, but judging from Renzo's handicraft, it would most probably be 95% my effort, not to mention that it would stick to the paper
• get colored paper and do a paper origami flower (try googling "Winson Chan Origami" and you'll see what i mean... and NO, i'm not THAT Winson Chan), but again, it'll mostly be effort on my end as Renzo wouldn't be able to manage the complexity of origami
• soak toilet paper in a 2:1 PVC glue to water mixture and after they dry and hardens, paint over with poster color... my preferred choice and it is very mold-able before it dries and i have had much experience doing it in my childhood days but unfortunately, it is time consuming and tedious 
• get colored beads/sand/confetti and just glue them on... which seems to be the best choice for this job

So I went to Daiso and purchased 3 items at $2 each and started work with Renzo straight away after my dinner and we were on a tight deadline... as opposed to the ladybug project from last year...

And for the benefit of those who want to try it out with their kids, I'll list out the materials and steps :)

Materials

• Colored pipe cleaners (the one i got from Daiso is 50 pieces in assorted colors, eventually i used 2 silvers, 2 yellow and 2 greens)
• Starch Glue (Daiso packs them in 3s... picked it over other type because of the strength and also that it is not too liquid as this project requires a large surface area of glue and those runny ones will soak right though the paper
• deco sand (those gardening deco kind... bought a can of blue ones to be used as blue petals)
• scissors to cut the pipe cleaners
• pen... for writing...duh...
• paper with outline of a flower on it

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Step 1

Slap a generous slab of glue in the middle of the flower and spiral yellow pipe cleaners onto it as the pistil of the flower (if i got the anatomy of the flower correct...haha) and cut silver pipe cleaners and outline the petals of the flower.

Tip: Be really generous with the glue, you wouldn't want the pipe cleaners to move about later when you pour the blue deco sand onto the paper

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Step 2

Spiral 2 green pipe cleaners and then squeeze them near the center so the become over-shaped and kinda like leaves of the flower and again with lotsa glue, stick them where the leaves should be

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Step 3

The trickiest bit of the project

Pour the deco sand onto a small container (I just grab a plastic lid which was within reach), so that you can gauge how much of the sand would be poured onto the paper.

Lay a thin layer of glue on where you want the blue petals to be and gently pour the sand onto the glue

After completely covering all the petals, let the glue set for a while... (I gave Renzo a bath... lol) then dust away the remaining sand that were not held on by the glue. Stick an ice-cream stick between the leaves to make a flower stem if you want to.

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Step 4

Write your own greeting message... =)

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And we are done!

Hopefully Renzo's teacher Stella will like Renzo's little gift and HapPy TeAchERs' DaY to all the teacher at Renzo's school... and every other teacher out there!... You people affect eternity, you can never tell when and where your influence stops, so carry on teaching!

a new effective way to cultivate good habits in Renzo

When Renzo was 1.5 years old, he was reciting 三字经 together with us, he could not memorize 100% and his articulation wasn't really clear, of course he couldn't possibly understand a single word of it but I thought that was a pretty good start, to expose our little boy to some ancient, traditional Chinese Confucian classics, which might help him to learn morality, especially filial piety and respect for the elderly.

We did not pursue further to teach him more about it, because I personally feel that  三字经 focuses quite a lot on elements of Chinese history, which is not as relevant to his development at this stage. So instead, I started teaching him 弟子规 since he turned 4 last week. It is another book based on the ancient teaching of Chinese Confucius, that emphasizes the basic requisites for being a good person and guidelines for living in harmony with others.

It's amazing to see some pretty good result after Renzo started learning and reading 弟子规 for just a few days.

For example, after I explained "晨则省, 昏则定", meaning, in the morning I will greet my parents and at night I will wish them a good night, Renzo went to our helper and asked, "Aunty Jonalyn, may I have water please?" in a super polite tone, and after he finished the water, he returned the cup to our helper and said "Thank you Aunty Jonalyn, GOOD NIGHT!"

I bet that's the first time Renzo took the initiative to say Good Night to someone.

And nowadays when he's not behaving well, I could simply remind him to go and read his  弟子规, he will LISTEN, and FOLLOW without making any fuss at all!!

Now, he could read the first few verses fluently on his own, indeed, he understands and remembers these verses very well. Because when I asked him, 父母做什么，你要“须敬听"? (what do parents do, you will listen respectfully?), he answered immediately, "父母教, 须敬听 mummy!" (When my parents instruct me, I will listen respectfully).

Here's a video of him reading "父母呼 应勿缓 父母命 行勿懒 父母教 须敬听 父母责 须顺承"

Confucius emphasized that the basic moral values and virtues should be first taught to a child since young. Those values are to respect elders, respect brothers and sisters, respect wife and husband, respect the society and lastly respect the country as a whole. We often question why kids nowadays have no respect for anyone, I think probably it's because these great values are not instilled into their minds from young, instead we focus too much on creativity, imagination, self-esteem, or even academic records. I would strongly recommend 弟子规 to parents, have fun reading and learning together with your kids!!