Tornado Boy and I were lucky enough to be selected to receive a copy of Maestro Classics’ “Peter and the Wolf” on CD as part of my participation in the TOS Homeschool Crew. The CD and booklet package is part of their Stories in Music™ series. The music on the CD is performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the story is narrated by Yadu (aka Dr. Konrad Czynski). Yadu narrates the other stories in this series as well.

This CD set is so much more than just the story of Peter and the Wolf. You also get an interesting look at the life of the composer (Prokofiev) and a great description of the music itself. The introduction gives the listener a bit of story background as well as the identity of the main characters of the story and lets them know which instrument and musical theme represents each of them. In addition to the narrated version of the story, there’s also an instrumental version and a couple of selections of Russian Folk Music. The companion booklet gives a quick bio of Trio Voronezh, the folk group and a more in depth look at the unusual instruments that they play – the balalaika, the bayan and the domra. The balalaika is the standing instrument with the triangular bottom in the picture below. The bayan is similar to an accordion, but without a keyboard. The domra is a Russian folk instrument, similar to a mandolin.

The booklet that comes with the CD combines the educational articles and biographies with puzzles and games that your child can do. It has a dot-to-dot, a code puzzle, a crossword, a matching activity (match the instrument to the character in the story that it sound represents), and a bit about Cyrillic script -the Russian language that the original score was written in. The Maestro Classics website has the puzzle answers posted. For the more adventurous, there is also sheet music for part of the Peter and the Wolf score. The music CD can really be enjoyed by anyone, but the booklet really requires reading and some puzzle skills, so I’d think 6 and up would probably a good age to enjoy the booklet part of the package.

Maestro Classics sells their base CD and booklet sets for $16.98. The Maestro Classics website allows you to sample some of the content of the Peter and the Wolf as well as pieces from the other stories in the series. We are seriously considering purchasing Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel for Tornado Boy as well. I loaded Peter and the Wolf to his iPod and I think that he’d enjoy having Mike Mulligan on there as well since I already know that he enjoys the story. If you don’t already have the Mike Mulligan storybook, they also offer a CD and book package for for $29.95. I love that the website already has a lesson plan for the Mike Mulligan disc available for download.

We really enjoyed this product!

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of Peter and the Wolf, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

Our week consisted mostly of time with family. The above picture is proof of why I could never be a professional photographer. I tried to get a decent family shot with no luck. This outtake is the best of the bunch. My parents are on the left. Tornado Boy and Tornado Dad are in the middle. My in-laws are on the right. I really don’t know how professional photographers are able to get everyone looking great at the same time. I’d be willing to imagine that their subjects aren’t a bunch of critics, either. grrr!

Tornado Boy got to celebrate Mother’s Day with both grandmothers this weekend. He was so darn excited to have them both around at the same time. Mammaw and Pappaw (my in-laws) live about an hour and a half away, so we see them fairly often; but my parents live in Maine so we don’t see them nearly as much. Tornado Boy and I crafted these suncatchers for the grandmothers. We had a good time making them. Anytime that TB gets to use glitter he is very excited. We had a very nice holiday with our family.

Language Arts:

We’re a little off-schedule with Five in a Row. I had originally planned to ‘Row the book Night of the Moonjellies this week, but once I figured out that it was set in New England I figured that it would be a better pick for a week where we’re visiting my parents and actually IN New England. I switched to Madeline since Tornado Boy is currently so excited about learning more about the human body. Madeline has her appendix out in the story. That prompted a ton of questions about surgery, scars and the like from TB. He was very sure that he did not want to have surgery of any kind. I can’t blame him for that one. I’ll do a separate post with more details about Madeline when we’re done all of our FIAR activities.

I’m also excited that we’re officially halfway through the Hooked On Phonics Master Reader program. We got the older, Windows XP version of the program for about $30 with the coupon code SLICK50 a while back. As best as I can tell, it’s the same as the $200 program without the support for Vista/Windows 7. If you can use the XP version, it’s a total steal. I am very pleased with Tornado Boy’s progress with the program. His fluency has improved greatly since we started using it. The computer game portion called “Chop it” has taught him how to deal with syllables. He can now successfully separate most 4+ syllable words. This has made him much more successful in sounding out long words. He is much less prone to guessing now when he encounters a large word. The story cards that come with the program tend to be a bit dated since they tend to feature older athletes and news stories. They are a good jumping off point for further investigation, though. We’ve looked up several of the topics on the Internet to learn more about them. At this price, the program gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me.

Math:

We’re finishing up Math-U-See Primer level this week. We probably should have started with Alpha, but live and learn, right? I’ll probably sell the Primer books and video. Alpha seems to cover all of the same topics, just in more depth. Tornado Boy is really catching on to addition and is now writing and solving his own problems (see photo). He’ll write his own number sentence and then use the blocks to solve the problem, then he writes the answer. We really love this program. TB totally sees it as a game and he loves for us to call out different addition problems with two or three addends for him to solve.

Art:

We didn’t do much art beyond the suncatchers at home this week due to our company. I wanted to share this collage that TB did at his art/music/gym class. Their theme of the week was “baseball” and he really loved making this craft. He even controlled himself enough not to eat the stale popcorn. Go, TB!

Science:

We didn’t do a specific science activity this week, but we did spend a lot of time observing our tomato plant this week. It finally sprouted flowers, so we had to shake the plant to help with pollination since there aren’t too many bees or other insects flying around inside our home. We can’t wait until it starts to bear fruit.
We also got a Venus Fly-Trap this week. It’s apparently had several meals, but none of which we have observed ourselves. Four of the five pods are now closed up tight; working on digestion. We hope to actually catch it in action sometime soon.

Music:

I walked into Tornado Boy’s bedroom the other day and found this set up. I asked him about it and he told me that the animals were watching his concert that he played on his keyboard and then they listened to an audiobook with him. I really wish that I’d been around to see the actual performance. Tornado Boy tends to pick out a new song every week or so that he gets totally fixated on and will listen to over and over again. This week’s selection is “Save the Ocean” from the Schoolhouse Rocks Earth DVD that we borrowed from the library. I’m not much for rap-type music, but this is pretty cute. I especially love to hear him sing the spelling parts.

Physical Fun:

We had a fun playdate at local ‘sprayground’ this week with some friends of ours. I don’t have any pictures of the running chaos of the sprayground, but I did take this shot at a sandbox that we visited afterwards. I’m posting this because I seriously thought that I would never take this picture. Tornado Boy has been very texture-averse for some time. Sand and grass were pretty much a big no-no on bare skin. It appears that he is working through that now. He sat here and played for quite a long time. I actually was able to sit and have a conversation with my girlfriend. What a nice change!

If you’d like to see what other pre-K/K kids are doing this week, head on over to Homeschool Creations.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Childhood 101 is sponsoring a fun new link up called “We Play”. What a fun way to get creative ideas for your child.

We love music here, and we really love active games as Tornado Boy needs to get those sillies out. I have a CD called “Adventures in Storyville” by the Minstrels of Mayhem. This is a fun kid’s album that contains the Irish folk song called “Rattlin’ Bog”. This song and its accompanying moves are often taught at summer camps. This is a progressive song (think 12 days of Christmas) and during each round of the song, a new item is added to the song. Each new item also brings along a new hand or body motion for it. The longer the song goes on, typically the faster it is sung. The song will definitely challenge the child’s memory and physical dexterity.

I searched around for quite a while the past couple of days trying to find a decent video rendition of it. I only had marginal success with that. Many of the YouTube videos are from Irish Pubs and don’t show the hand motions. I found one home video from an old Minstrels of Mayhem show here. The quality is sort of poor and it’s too jumpy to really be able to follow the motions, but now you know exactly what we’re listening to when we play this game.

The video above is rather long, but it gives a much slower explanation of the motions (these vary widely across versions) that you can do along with the song. This shows how you can sing the song yourself which will allow you to control the pace of the game.

Here are some possible signs to do along with the song:
Hole: put your fingers together in front of you in an open circle
Tree: two hands trace parallel lines starting at the level of your head and heading downwards
Branch: hold one arm out as a branch
Twig: hold up your pinkie finger
Nest: cup your hands
Bird: one hand pointed forward at your face as a beak, the other sticking out behind as a tail
Wing: flap one arm
Feather: trace the path a feather would take as it falls through the air

There are many different versions of this song available, including several available through iTunes. You can also listen to a few versions on Lala. AVOID the version by Authority Zero – it is NOT child friendly. The version by Red Grammer is at a good pace for children. The lyrics vary quite a bit across versions, so you may have to make up your own motions to go along with the song, but it’s a lot of fun. Won’t you dance and play along with us?

Discover more fun ways to play at Childhood 101.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Tornado Boy has had a long term (in his world!) fascination with violins. I’m not sure what started it exactly, but I do know that every time that we walked into Target, he wanted to hear the “Mozart’s Violin” music samples in their music department. About a year ago an older man approached us while we were listening and he recommended a different selection – to which a then 3-year-old TB said “I want to hear Mozart’s Violin – it’s number 17″ (can’t remember the actual number, I just know that he was accurate). The man was quite taken aback and then laughed and let him have his way.

For Christmas this past year, Tornado Boy was absolutely insistent that he wanted a toy violin that he had seen in Cracker Barrel. The toy is very delicate and the recommended for ages 8 and up. However, TB was relentless in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Santa Claus delivered, and Tornado Boy was thrilled. This is definitely a toy that requires “SUPER-VISION!!!” (he always says this word as though this is a super power). The violin plays the right note when you draw the bow across the strings, but being delicate is really somewhat against my little boy’s nature. He does work hard with this toy, though. This morning he told me that he wanted to “play a concert” for his stuffed animals, so I let him play with it for a bit.

Practicing for his "concert".

After the “concert”, Tornado Boy asked me what the knobs on the neck of the violin were called. I had no idea. I played clarinet growing up; but I’d really never learned much about the violin beyond the fact that it was very challenging to play. Internet to the rescue! We looked up the parts of the violin together and learned that the knobs are called “tuning pegs”. We talked about how they’re used to tighten the strings on a real violin in order to impact the sound of the note that is played. We talked about how we can change how the notes sound in his ‘tub flutes‘ toy by adding and removing water and how that is similar.

Parts of the Violin - Diagram from Mad Visuals

I don’t really have an official music curriculum that I use, but I do try to make sure that Tornado Boy has some exposure to it and that he has a chance to hear some new music each week. A couple of fun music resources that we enjoy are the music section on Starfall – in particular the Mozart selection. Another is the wonderful Pandora music service. You can listen to it on the Internet, through some Blu-Ray players and on some phones. It is an amazing tool that allows you to seed a music feed with a particular song, composer or artist and it will create a station based on that. The service is based the “Music Genome Project” and is just an amazing free resource. The service also has some pre-created music stations and allows you to share those or the ones that you create – so here’s a link to one of their violin stations. I highly recommending checking out Pandora even if you don’t care to use it as a teaching tool.

I keep mulling over music lessons for Tornado Boy. He is definitely interested – especially in the piano (keyboard) and violin but I have serious concerns about his inability to sit still. I’m really not sure if I can find a teacher that might be able to deal with his active nature, or if it would be better to wait about until he matures a bit. We may try a week of music camp to see how it goes. We’ll see!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.