Below: Eashan and Ashwin DETERMINED to get their balloons inflated! Even after that activity was concluded and everyone had moved on to the next activity, this pair sat on the couch huffing and puffing over their balloons. Finally I had to encourage them to move on before they became covered in saliva...
Stella was at the receiving end of quite a lot of comedy, however she could hold her own...
The following was a sweet reminder of the reasons I am happy I am a piano teacher: A little part of camp was the Violin Experience (These are all my violins) and everyone sounded pretty much awful... they were so enthusiastically scraping along and I was concerned things were going to get broken, including my ear drums. Stella alone made any reasonably musical sound come out of the violin because she had had some previous experience!
This was the location of the very successful piano recital! (We're pianists, after all.) Below is the program that was given. In the background you see one of the residents who was so pleased with the performance she started passing out dollar bills to the kids! Some of them said, "Wow, I never got paid for playing the piano before!" The rehearsal two days before proved that the program was going to be a success, and it was. The residents kept saying "bravo!" and the caretakers always stopped to watch, always smiling. There really was quite a display of virtuosity for such a young group!
Recital Program, August 9, 10:30 AM
Amber, 6
Spanish Caballero
Village Waltz (Kohler)
The Great Escape (Randall Hartsell)
Luke, 6
Spanish Caballero
Deep Singer
Eccosaise (Beethoven)
Eashan, 7
Sonatina in F Mvt. 1 (Clementi)
Gavotte in G minor (J. S. Bach)
La Chasse (Burgmuller)
Luke B, 8
Arabesque (Burgmuller)
Ballade (Burgmuller)
Tarentella (Burgmuller)
Ashwin 7
Trumpet Tune (Duncombe)
King William’s March (Jeremiah Clark)
Stella, 11 – Waltz in A minor (Chopin)
Jamin, 8 Jazz Sonatina (Robert Vandall)
Waltz in A minor, (Grieg)
Afterwards we went in two groups to opposite ends of the street with cornstarch-filled balloons and popped them for each other in order to experience the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. It was fun! Because when we popped ours, there was a flash of powder and the explosion of the balloon, there was a couple of seconds silence... and then we could hear the other group suddenly say "Cool!!" in a chorus of exclamations- the sound of their reaction to the delay of sound of our popped balloon came a second late to our ears as well.
Look at that node right in front of Luke's shirt! (above)
Chris demonstrated the tonal relationships of partials on the guitar while Luke tries to get the rope to whip up the right number of nodes for that particular pitch.
Amber hears 440 Hz. with her own skull as a resonator!
The biggest thing gained, I believe, besides a big introduction to physics of sound, was a very increased awareness of rhythm, because we daily played a rhythm game that was so addictive I suppose the kids would have played it the whole camp if I'd let them. I am going to have to describe it soon in another post, but I can now throw any sixteenth/eighth/quarter rhythm including rests and syncopations at these kids, and they are equal to it.
We watched part of a Beethoven Documentary which I thought was a little heavy duty in spots, but still awesome. The kids loved the way Haydn's face fell when Beethoven said "Every artist must find his own way.." "Oooohh..." they said, and we had to backtrack over that spot a few times. They knew exactly what was going on in the relationship between the two composers and they reveled in the tensions between them! I got a kick out of that.
Here is Luke age 8 doing some fantastic tricks that have nothing to do with music camp but were amazing enough to have to post anyway.
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