Maia (5.9 y.o.) and Camelia

Dear Hellene, she worked very, very much for this, I am so proud of her, too .
Thank you so much for these words, she is over the moon hearing how much you appreciate her efforts

Yay, I can hardly wait to see what you suggest for the music dictation writing! I have also been thinking of a way to mark the sharps, so a professional advice is more than I could dream about .

Thank you very, very much, dear Hellene!

Hello, again!

Since Maia is absolutely crazy about Beethoven, my plan is to study this great composer for at least 2 weeks.
This means reading as much as possible about him (his life and work), listen to his music every single day and organize "guess the musical piece" games and, last but nor least, learn and play at least a bit of Beethoven at the piano.
I have also made new polymer clay figurines, and now Maia can easily recognize most of the greatest composers of the world.
In this picture, you can see Vivaldi, Beethoven and Mozart:


In the first part of today's posting, I would like to tell you a few words about three books:
The first book we read is called "Beethoven si furtuna de sunete" ("Beethoven and the Storm of Sounds") and is written by the Romanian author Cristina Andone. This book is part of an excellent series of musical books for children, a series that I'm happy to announce that is right now being translated into English! Maia adores these books and the little elf-composers that envisage the great composers we all know.




As you can see, they are my inspiration when I create the polymer clay figurines, too.

My second recommendation is called "Beethoven" and is written by Lene Mayer Skumanz and is a gorgeous, elaborated introspection into Beethoven's personal life and work. I highly recommend it, Maia says she understands now even better how hard it was for Beethoven to write music, how harsh his life was, how brave, honest and magnificent he was!




The third title for today is Anna Harwell Celenza's book, "The Heroic Symphony" and, as you can guess from the title, is the story (real, not fictional) behind the great "Eroica". We love this book and read it over and over again.




Happy reading, you all!

The second part of today's post is about Maia's practical activity:
~ In this video, she learns the right hand finger numbering for the piece "Fur Elize" (it's been at least an year ago since she drives me crazy, telling me how much she wants to learn it):


For a long time, she used the 2nd Soft Mozart version. Then, she wanted to try the 4th and she loved it very, very much. With "Fur Elize", we stepped to version 5 and, so far, she seems to like and understant it, too.

This is the fast note writing (excuse my voice, please, and the fact that, at the end, we ran out of paper):



And this is a note recognition game (thank you so much for the excellent lesson plans, dear Hellene!!!).
You can see that there are times when I insist on Maia playing them over and over again, louder (her voice is not at all excellent and she is aware of this "flaw", so she hardly dares to open her mouth and sing):



Besides repeating 3-4 "old" pieces every day, sight-read 2-3 new pieces, and work on a new one, this is our one week activity.
I hope my post was useful, have a wonderful weekend, you all!

Hello, everybody!

Maia has finally learned "Fur Elize", her favourite song.
Here she plays it with the teaching video and metronome:



And here she plays it alone:



Have a nice day, everyone!

Hello, dear friends!

Besides practicing for the May recital, Maia is sight-reading (we are still working on the right hand for now):








And, she is practicing "Lullaby" with the teaching video:



Have a wonderful weekend, you all!