Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Coupla quick Bennyisms and some Beethoven

Sorry it's been so long -- the semester is in full swing and I've been a little busy.

Bennyism #1:  Neil walks into the room.  Ben looks up from his tablet and says, "E-reader is a very relaxing icon."

Bennyism #2:  This morning Ben was searching frantically for some toy and couldn't find it.  Neil asked him for a description:  "It's metal, and it's a rectangular prism."  [Turns out it was one of his toy baking dishes.  They studied various three dimensional shapes in school last week.]

Remember how Ben was inspired to learn how to play Ode to Joy on the piano?  It's coming along very nicely, thank you.  Neil shot this quick video the other evening during piano practice.  We're still working on the ending, but still, you gotta be impressed.

5 comments:

dlefler said...

WOW - great job on Ode to Joy, Ben! And "rectangular prism?" I think he just outranked the majority of US adults in geometry knowledge!

Matt's lesson this week includes the horrid Dance of the Gnomes (3/4 time, so he hates it) and Mary Had a Little Lamb. He can read sheet music if it only goes to G on the treble clef or F on the bass (the John Thompson Book 1 only uses notes they can reach without moving the thumbs from middle C). He has had trouble finding motivation to practice many of the "songs" because they're not real songs - he loves Mary Had a Little Lamb because he recognizes the tune. I'm thinking of getting him some additional sheet music in addition to his lesson book, just to keep him motivated.

Julia said...

3/4 time is definitely hard to get a feel for. Ben has a couple of those in his music book, too. We often close the piano and do tapping exercises on the lid, so as to isolate the rhythm and meter; it really seems to help. We're not reading sheet music yet, although he knows the pitch names and can identify them on the keyboard.

fethiye said...

He is better than me! :)

krlr said...

Your son rocks. "Metal rectangular prism" will keep me in smiles all morning.

Elsie Hickey Wilson said...

Delightful! Beethoven would be pleased!