We're still learning

I think I was onto something when I said Sunburst and I just couldn't focus. We're sick! She came down with it first. Coughing. Runny nose. Fever. Strange loud noises in her head, or under her bed, or some such thing. She said it sounded like someone meditating.

I don't know about that, but I feel like I've been catapulted into the side of a rock. I ache. My head is full, my throat is raw, my nose is red-- heck, even my eyes are running. Needless to say, I sat around today hoping to rebound as quickly as Sunburst.

Now that she's feeling chipper again, Sunburst quickly announced after lunch that she was bored. It stormed all morning, and the kids had already sat on the porch and watched the lightning for a good long time. I suggested she draw something. No. Knit? No. Read? No. "I give up," I said, and went back to my own knitting.

A little while later she emerged with her flute and pestered Einstein who had his nose buried in a blues songbook. "I want to read music, too," she told him. "Will you show me?"

So Einstein showed her his book and told her the letters for the bass notes he was reading. She caught on quickly, but of course bass notes aren't really going to work for the pentatonic flute. So he sent her over to me.

Reading sheet music. Are we ready for this? I stuck "Robin Red" through the copy machine-- a song she knows by heart, and another one we had briefly visited, "Saddle My Pony", from Clump-a-Dump and Snickle-Snack. I didn't give her much advice to go on, really. My heart wasn't in it today and my nose was running madly. I said, "See these? These are notes, just pictures of the sounds you play. You start here. This is a picture of these holes covered up. This is one less, like this. For every note you play, there is a picture here. Does that make sense?"

She carried them off into the laundry room, since Kitty Bill was napping, and she played for a good while. When she came out for dinner she announced that she had just about got "Saddle My Pony" figured out. "Did you hear it? Was I close?"

I think she needs to own this music.

Like I said, we'll be learning loads this summer, despite any intentions to take time off and have fun. Learning is fun. I'm so glad Sunburst is around to keep us all focused on the goal. All fun, all the time, learning as we go, together.

Tomorrow I'll break out a new main lesson book for her, and she can go to town filling it with the songs she knows. I'll print them out, she can cut them, glue them, decorate them, whatever. It's going to be great!