The Mystery of the MIM

Yesterday we went to the new Musical Instrument Museum (MIM for short) with our homeschool group. Before we went into the museum, while we were standing in the courtyard, we learned from the tour guide that the entire building was made from sandstone shipped from India. She also told us that it took six years to collect all the instruments that are in the museum. I found it very interesting how they used different classes of instruments to organize our presentation, how each part of the world has all different types of instruments, and how they acquired the biggest stringed instrument in the world for this museum.

For the first part of the tour, there was a small demonstration on the different categories of musical instruments. These categories are: Aerophones, Membranophones, Electrophones, Idiophones, Corpophones, and Chordophones. The museum classifies these instruments in these categories to better understand how they are played. The best Example of these classes is the Theremin. It Makes sound by sending an electronic signal to an ampliffier when it's magnetic fields are disturbed. So, the Theremin is an electrophone.

Another thing that made the museum interesting was all the different types of instruments they had. It seemed like there were at least two instruments from every country in the world. That's more than 390 instruments from around the world. Other wise know as enough instruments to give a musician a headache trying to remember them all. Along with these instruments they also had some historic ones on display including one of the light up drums from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Peace Piano, Eric Clapton's guitar "Brownie", and a couple of amplifiers that Dick Dale blew up. Who knew a broken amp could be considered historic.

My favorite instrument in the museum is the Octobass. It is a 12 foot tall three stringed Double bass that is so deep that it can barely be heard by human ears. Only three were ever made, and there is only one person in the western hemisphere who can play one. After we got home, Omar Domkus (the parent who set up the tour and he is also a bass player) sent us a YouTube video of someone playing the same Octobass. It sounded like a dying whale.

Another thing I noticed about the tour was the fact that the tour guide seemed to think we didn't know much about instruments. During our second run through the museum, (the tour guide seemed to be rushing us through the exhibits) the tour guide met up with my dad and I while we were looking at the electric guitars. She told us about how on the web-site they had a whole curriculum on how electric guitars and amps work. My dad then explained how we had just finished building one (picture of the guitar we built is below), and he told her that I work the sound board at our church. The look on her face was priceless.

This concludes the mystery of the MIM: Idiophones don't mean the maker was an idiot, broken amps can be historic, and the tour was most likely made for public school groups.

Eagleridge Update

I thought I should give you an update on what has happened at our homeschool enrichment program, Eagleridge. On Wednesday, we officially started our third week back to Eagleridge and on Monday, we will officially end it.

We will start with my first class, music. In music we talked about body language. Over the past weeks we had been talking about communication. The first week we talked about slit drums, and the second week we talked about talking drums. One of the things we did was take a white sheet and put a light behind it so we could use body language to say something. It was fun, but the thing I was supposed to show was quick and tiny and to do it, I had to shuffle across the floor really fast on my knees, and I got a bad rug burn.

In my second class, P.E., my P.E. teacher worked us to death (not literally.) For our introduction, we played "Home Base." For our fitness, we did "Race Track Fitness." That's where we died. We had to run around the gym, and then come back to our cone to do push-ups or sit-ups or something like that. I went around the gym about 16 times and it's a big gym. Then we had to jump rope for the rest of the class. At the end, we got to play cage ball though.

In science we looked at samples of human skeleton muscle, cardiac muscle, smooth muscle, and blood on microscopes. Just before music extras, one of my friends asked me if I would take her to the bathroom. At our new campus, we have to take a buddy to the bathroom and the bathrooms are only unlocked between classes and at recess. We missed 10 minutes of class because something like 15 kids were in there. We missed getting singing solos, but since we wanted solos, too, the teacher made them duets.

After a lunch of mini corn dogs, applesauce, and chocolate milk, and recess, my class and I went to art class. In art we started working on our calligraphy poems. We got the poems from last week's composition work of diamontes. This week in composition we're working on cinquains. Here are a few I wrote:

Autumn

Colorful- Leaves

chills, crunching, rustling

Beautifully colorful around me

Fall

Eating

Delicious- Food

munching, chewing, crunching

Defeating my agonizing hunger

Devouring

Music

Graceful- Notes

playing, listening, affecting

Telling me a story

Songs

In computers we reviewed the tools in Word. Then I went home. Now my work is officially done.

Poetry Is Music

We have had a pretty busy summer this year, and we haven't had very much time for blogging. We started the summer with a camping trip on the beach with my best friend and his sister. Rebecca and I also went on a camping trip with our grandparents and cousins.We've also done a whole bunch of other activities this summer. One of these activities was a concert at which Natalie Merchant was promoting her new album Leave Your Sleep. I really liked this concert because all of the songs were poems set to music, and we have been doing poetry in my homeschool composition class and at home. It is very interesting how this form of songs works, and because it is very interesting how she used certain instruments for certain parts of the songs.

The songs on this album were of a collection of poems either by children, for children, or of children and turned into music. Some of the poetry that she used was The Dancing Bear by Albert Bigelow Paine, Bleezer's Ice-Cream by Jack Prelutsky, and The Sleepy Giant by Charles E. Carryl. All of the songs came with a short biography about the poets. There were some bad reviews about the concert that we read before we went. People were complaining that the concert was more like a poetry lecture as opposed to a concert. However, I found these people she talked about very interesting. One of the most interesting was Albert Bigelow Paine, who was a close friend of Mark Twain, and he eventually wrote his biography.

I really like how Natalie Merchant turned these poems into music because poetry is meant to sound like music. Music is essentially made up of rhythm and sound, and poetry is exactly the same. Just last week, we were doing limericks in my homeschool composition class, and Mrs. Pittman was talking to us about how rhythm is part of poetry by the way things are accented. The week before that, we were doing haikus which all have the same rhythm made up of the same number of syllables per line: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and then 5 syllables again. Shakespeare's poetry and stories are good examples of using rhythm in poetry because they were all written in iambic pentameter. Iambic Pentameter is a form of rhythm which alternates using 5 stressed and unstressed syllables per line. These forms of poetry are only three examples of the many ways that rhythm turns poetry into music.

It was also very interesting which instruments she used for the album. At the concert there was a clarinet, a bass clarinet, a saxophone, a violin, a cello, a double bass, a tuba, two guitars, drums, and a keyboard. Some of these instruments she only used in certain parts of the songs. For example, in the song, The Peppery Man, whenever she said "The Peppery Man," one of the guitarists would echo it in an unnaturally low voice while the double bass player played three or four notes on the tuba making it sound hilarious. I know this sounds confusing, but all of the people on the stage were able to play multiple instruments and some sang back up. It was also really funny what was said by Natalie in between songs. During the beginning of the second song, the speakers started making a weird static sound which they called, "The dragonfly in the Dodge Theater air-conditioning system." 

I am also impressed by this album because it took her only six and a half years to turn all 26 poems into songs. I hope this post explains what we have been doing this summer, and that poetry is music. I can't wait until Natalie Merchant's next concert here.

Eagleridge: What is It?

Mondays and Wednesdays are not the same old wake up at ten and take your time through math, writing, and music.


On Wednesdays, we wake up at 7:00, get dressed, have breakfast, and then head to Eagleridge via my best friend Devin's mom. Eagleridge is pretty much just a school for homeschoolers. It's all the ordinary classes (except math) just without homework, and you can choose which days you go. Once we get there at 8:30 AM, Rebecca goes off to some class I don't know of and I go to Physical Education. There, we usually do fitness then move on to the lesson (the sport were working on) and then move on to Science. Every month we work on a different type of science. This month we've been working on the physics of flight. My next class is Student Council. This year I ran for treasurer, lost, found an organization for our Christmas toy drive, was home sick the day we decided on a different organization, seconded the motion to make cards to sell for a fundraiser, tried to make a motion to do crazy hair day again this year, failed unanimously,and my idea for the school dance was the chosen. After that, my next class is Yearbook. In there, we are currently making houses on Google Sketch Up because there is not much else to do, but all we did was made pages for the yearbook. (I made the student council page.) Next, we have lunch. After 30 minutes of recess, we have Composition, Computers, and finally, Art. School ends at 3:30 PM on Wednesdays.


On Mondays, I wake up at 6:30 AM, get dressed, and then again get picked up by Devin's mom. The day starts at 8:00 AM with Medieval History were we are currently writing business letters to the teacher about applying to NASA to go back in time to retrieve lost history. My next class is Compass Learning Math which is an online math program. Next, I have Chess Club where we learn strategies and play chess. After Chess Club, I have Sports Math in which we are currently doing fantasy football. Next I have lunch. After lunch, I have Pre-Algebra. In here it is a lot like school just made easier by the best teacher in the world. Next, I have Physical Education which is just like on Wednesdays. After that I have Microsoft Office in which we do different projects using Microsoft Office. Finally, I play clarinet in Band, my last class of the day. School ends at 4:30 PM on Mondays.


One of the most frequently asked questions is if I miss anything from when I used to be in school. My answer to that is Eagleridge has all the stuff that I might miss from school!

The Scarlet Letter "H"

I still find it very difficult to tell people that I homeschool my kids, and I've been doing it for three years. I've been told that it gets easier, but I haven't noticed that yet. You'd think that with estimates being close to two million homeschooled kids in the United States, people would have a better acceptance with the idea of homeschooling, but I think homeschoolers are still hotly prejudged.

One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we can do "school" whenever we want, and we are able to make use of the less-crazy hours of the day to schedule dentist and doctor appointments, go shopping, and have fun. Unfortunately, it's during these "school hours" that we encounter the most ridiculous questions. They usually start with, "Is school out early today?" and end with, "But how do you know if they're learning anything?" when we attempt to explain our lives.

I've thought of different ways of handling these questions such as: handing the questioner a pre-printed fact sheet, answering my new response: "See my blog," or just deflecting altogether: "We're happily living the lives of morons." Better yet, maybe we should just go out in public with the big scarlet letter "H" for "homeschooling" around our necks so everyone knows our crime.

My dental hygienist is a personal favorite "questioner." I've gone to the same hygienist for over ten years. Being the dental snob that I am, I actually request her when I make appointments, and she keeps notes on what equipment to use on me. If she ever moved or retired, my teeth would probably fall out of my head. Plus, I like her. However, I think it's because I only see her every six months, and where I always remember every conversation I've had with someone, she can never remember that I homeschool my kids. We usually get started slowly. It usually goes a little something like this:

"How's work?" (She knows this because it says I'm a nurse on my chart.)
"Busy, everybody decided to get drunk and go to the ER over the weekend."
"Oh, do you only work weekends?"
"And Mondays, some Tuesdays."
"Oh, so what do you do the rest of the week?"
"I homeschool my children."
(She backs away from the teeth scraping with a puzzled look.)
"But how do they get their socialization?"
(This is fun to give a one-liner to when your mouth is full of sharp objects.)
"Well, they've done scouts, ballet, Irish dance, hula dance, tap dance, church, choir, youth group, chess club, soccer, baseball, basketball, golf, karate, archery, science classes, art classes, drama classes, music lessons, play in a band, gone away to camp numerous times, and go to a homeschool enrichment program that is essentially a 'school' 2 days per week."
"But aren't they missing something?"
(Here's where I give the puzzled look. Seriously? Am I really being asked this?)
"Like what?"
"Like tests, how do you know how they're doing?"
(Wait a second, I guess she gave up on socialization.)
"I let my kids take the AIMS (Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards) test every year, and they always pass despite the fact that I have not taught from the test the whole year as the schools do."
"But how will they get into college?"
"Colleges love homeschoolers because they are self-starters. There are also community colleges, online universities, ACT tests, and SAT tests that can get them where they want to go."
"I just can't imagine doing that."

I can't tell you how many conversations I've had that have gone just like this!!! And then I'll have the same conversation with the same people again! Homeschooling is still an idea that people just consider "weird" despite whatever evidence there is to the contrary. Compounding the problem is that many homeschoolers remain quiet about their practices for fear of losing their right to homeschool. If you're interested in seeing how this right has been threatened, there are many cases documented on http://www.hslda.org.

An Ordinary School Day

One of the advantages to homeschooling is that there is no set time you need to finish it, but you can go at your own pace. We usually start math around 10-10:30, and end around noon. We then have lunch, and begin work on writing. We then end around 1:00 and move on to another activity like geography, science, or history. We do this selected subject until about 2:00 and then move on to practicing our instruments. While Rebecca's practicing piano, I'm practicing clarinet or guitar, and when I'm practicing piano, Rebecca's practicing flute. This lasts until about 3:00 when we consider our self done and then have free time for the rest of the day. Rebecca usually spends that time writing books and short stories, while I usually spend my time reading or playing on the computer.

Although this is what an ordinary day of homeschooling is like, we almost always have some sort of Shakespeare play or science center homeschool class at least once a month. Most of the science center classes revolved around physics, like the Cat-A-Pult class where you were literally flinging a rubber cat trying to hit a target using a makeshift catapult, but there was a chemistry class, a robotics class, and a scientific method class. Along with all these classes, at home, I also made an illustrated, wall sized, periodic table, and recently, I built a guitar fuzz distortion pedal with my dad. I would say that the science activities I'm doing at home now are much more fun and advanced than when I was in school. When I was in second grade, I made a science fair project for the school science fair on how icicles are made. I enjoyed this, but the only other student participant was a fifth-grader who had done a project on how if you run a magnet over sand, little black particles will appear. After about three minutes of walking around the "science fair" we left the display board there and came back for it later.