Unstructured Music Time

We are trying something new, which we are calling our "Block Schedule Days".  On these two days out of the week, I set a schedule for our day, but only for categories of activity.  What exactly the kids do with that activity type during that time is up to them.  One category I wasn't exactly sure how they would handle was Music, so I lumped it together as one half-hour of "Art and Music".

See, normally I have to stand there and help them practice.  I've been doing a lot of coaxing to get Hypatia to do her violin, and there have even been tears some days.  And I was afraid they just wouldn't do their music at all given the option not to.

Instead, with their music time they each played, happily, for the other.  Hypatia tried to teach Carbon how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is her never-ending violin piece (Suzuki!) so they could do a duet.  They got bogged down by the fact that she hasn't learned to read music and is instead memorizing finger positions and singing her pieces to herself to learn them, and Carbon's piano book still gives him finger numbers so he also is pretty weak on reading notes.  But they struggled through it, playing by ear to figure out what notes on the piano went with the notes she was playing on the violin.

Then they switched it up and Carbon taught Hypatia how to play one of his piano pieces, and they did piano together for awhile.

Then they started doing rhythm games together.

It was amazing.  This is the kind of learning and exploring that has time to flourish when they have more time and freedom.