Not sure if Abbie will get round to actually taking the exam but she’s been learning a few of the Grade 2 flute pieces, so Anna has been accompanying … spot the mistake!
I don’t mention Abigail as much with regard to music; she takes a very different approach to the other two. It doesn’t come as easily to her, but she works far harder at it, and I think she enjoys it just as much. She wanted to learn the Grade 2 pieces to make sure she’s at that sort of level before swapping from recorder to flute at orchestra in September.
We just found out the music exam result we’d been waiting for. Anna was told a week or so ago that she’d scored 130, scraping a distinction in her grade 5 piano.
That was excellent enough but tonight Joe got tired of waiting so phoned his violin teacher to find out that he also got a distinction for his grade 3, with a grand score of 134, currently the household record for ABRSM exams.
Huge well done to both of them, they both worked really hard in the run up to these exams so I’m really pleased for them
No excitement, no presents – what I mean is that every special event under the sun is crammed into a three week period.
In the next three weeks, between us we have two music exams, two orchestra concerts, two ‘teacher’ concerts, a choral event for which the kids are singing extra stuff and I have now been asked to accompany. Oh, and Anna’s got the panto performance which is terribly music heavy and she is practicing *all* the time. We need another piano so that I can practice too!
Not to mention parents evenings (theirs), school fete (mine; we have to attend as one of our work days), and panto auditions (for some reason they are doing these, against my better judgment!). Of course Russ is on holiday during the next two weeks so Steve has next to no flexibility. And my work is more stressy than usual at the moment due to all our children’s reviews mucking up timetables and creating staffing issues. Argh!
Oh well, a bit of pressure never hurt anyone. It will all stop at the end of term, and then the next lot of stress can start – decorating
This weekend has been pleasant though. Saturday was orchestra with added committee meeting, then an afternoon with friends and an evening with more friends. It was Ruth’s 40th party down at the Turf, and a lovely opportunity to catch up with people I haven’t seen for ages.
Steve was off racing, and managed to win the class as well as break the class hill record too. Not bad considering that all his direct competitors have raced the hill before, and it was his first time there. It is kind of frustrating that he’s turning out to be so good at this darned racing lark!
This morning we decided to have a slow start followed by some homework time – Abbie’s got a ‘Britain in the 1960s’ project to do, so she made a start on that, while Anna had various bits and bobs of work to get done, and Josiah did a nice long music practice.
Got the first concert out of the way this afternoon; their cello/piano teacher’s pupil concert. For the grandparents, me to look back on, and anyone else who’s interested and wants to waste 6 minutes (there are worse ways to waste time but not many!), here are videos:
Came home for a bit more sorting out (laundry, argh, bane of my life, still haven’t finished it!), tea, and then we watched The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Don’t want to leave spoilers for anyone who’s not seen it or read the book, but it is recommended by all of us here, but it *will* make you cry.
Finally, for the record. My iPhone lives in my pocket, usually, therefore I am never frightened of losing it, I love it so much that I keep very good track of it. Also, as it would always be in my pocket, I wouldn’t ever have to grab it on the way out of a burning house! Anna’s cello is worth far less than Joe’s violin and also she’d be getting a full size one before too long in any case. So that clears up that little matter, and the rest of the questions were incidental, really – I had trouble making up my own mind which one to mark as ‘correct’ in most places!
Music practice in the morning/piano lessons this afternoon: one of Abbie’s G3 piano pieces is the theme tune to Top Cat, which she has never seen, so we had to hunt it out!
And this morning, she disappeared off to school but not to school – instead she caught a lift to a maths day held by the South West HEI Excellence Hub – a day of doing, thinking, and talking maths. She loved it and came home buzzing, ready to try out lots of mathematical tricks on me. And she’d apparently found out that 13 x 7 is 28
