Parenting Tip - Winning Hair Do

My daughter follows Shaunell's hair blog and loves to braid my granddaughter's hair in fun different ways.  Shaunell had a Valentine hair contest for her readers to submit their hair idea--but it had to include a heart.

My daughter won with her triple heart ponytail!  She also had another hair braid featured in the blog.
Check it out for the complete tutorial.  




  Thanks for reading,
                                                                   Cathy

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Parenting Tip - Run Slow

Often I see a man in my neighborhood jogging down the street.  Lately I’ve noticed that though technically he IS jogging, I think I could walk faster than he runs.  Yet in his mind he is running.

 

I’m a wanna be runner.  So when I go for my morning walks, I’ve been trying to run a little bit in between my walking.  The other day I had no more than started running and I was tired already.  For some reason I thought of the slow jogger and thought, “maybe if I just slow down a bit I can keep running.”  So I did and what do you know?  I was able to run a lot longer than if I had continued at the faster pace.

 

What does that have to do with parenting?  Sometimes we run to keep up with other moms we see so we can do all the great things they are doing.  But life is not a race.  You don’t have to run at someone else’s speed.  You only have to run as fast as YOU can run.  And sometimes that’s barely jogging.  So slow down-- but keep moving. 

 

Are you not as patient with your children as you wish you were?   You can’t be patient every moment of the day, but you can be patient lots of times during the day.  Allow yourself to slow down on how fast you have to become patient.  Be “patient” with yourself.

 

Do you feel guilty because your breakfast, lunch and dinner menus are all not as perfectly healthy and nutritional as you want them to be?  Slow down.  Aim on getting a healthy dinner on the table 1 or 2 times a week.  Make a healthy afterschool snack once or twice during the week.  Gradually you’ll start to feel more confident and knowledgeable in this area and be able to add more healthy foods to your menus.

 

Is your house a disaster area?  Clutter everywhere?  Clothes, toys, books strewn here and there.  Take it slow.  Choose one room that you want to stay clean, such as the kitchen or living room.  Make that area a priority to keep uncluttered and nice.  Gradually add other rooms in your home until your energy level is equal to the task.

 

Remember there are many speeds of running. You don’t have to be at top speed.  You can  slow down, but just keep moving.  And if you have to start walking for awhile, then walk. Be nice to yourself but don’t quit and give up.

 

Okay then, get your running shoes on and let’s go.  Go at YOUR pace.  Enjoy!

 

Thanks for reading,

Cathy

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Parenting Tip - Create a Marble Run!

When I took my grandchildren to the Phoenix Children’s Museum after Christmas, one of the things they were enthralled with was the marble runs.  I came across this great idea of how to make one on this blog, and of course I had to try and make it.

 

I happened to have some plastic tubes I bought at the dollar tree a long time ago that I don’t use anymore, so I cut them up, glued on the magnets and took them with me when I went to babysit my grandson.  He's only 18  months old, and he liked them, but I think I had more fun than he did.  He’s still a little young to know how to change the tubes around to get different tracks.   AND marbles are not the safest toy for an 18 month old.   AND he started to pull the magnets off the back of the tubes.  Darn hot glue—it doesn’t stick very good.  So I tried gorilla glue.  Nope-won’t stick good to plastic.  I guess I’ll have to go back to the basic toilet tube marble run.  And I bought some bright colored little balls to roll down them instead of marbles (actually I cut up a cheap bead necklace).

 

 

Creating a marble run is a great idea for preschoolers and older children.  There are lots of ideas out there.  Here are a few to look at to get you and your children's creative juices going:

 http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com/2011/08/boredom-buster-marble-run.html

http://creativeconnectionsforkids.com/2012/01/fun-with-a-marble-run/ 

 

Thanks for reading,

Cathy

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Parenting Tip - Declare a Family Read-a-thon Day!

 On Tuesday one of my piano students came to piano lessons in his pajamas.  Actually, his mother did too!  But she quickly explained that it was their family's read-a-thon day.  They stay in their pjs all day long, take the phone off the hook and read, read, read.  

Their piano lesson was at 2:00 in the afternoon and she had been reading outloud to her kids all morning long.  So far they had read over 80 books that morning!  She has stacks and stacks of books and loves to find them at garage sales.  When her husband gets home from work, he gets to read outloud for a while too.

Hmmm....I'm definitely thinking of adopting their read-a-thon idea.  I'll just make my own holiday, cancel all my teaching, buy a lot of chocolate, and read, read, read.  Thanks for the idea Kimmie and Stanton!

 

Here's a picture of all the books they read.  Click here to read Kimmie's blog.

Here's some fun places my grandchildren found to read when they came to visit one time:

Happy Reading!

Cathy

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Music Tip - How's That Bubba Section Coming?

Some of my students are playing intermediate level songs and need some guidelines in practicing them effectively.  It’s easy, when you practice short songs to just tell your students to play them 4-5 times every day.  But when the pieces get longer, playing the whole piece 4 xs can get really tedious, besides being very unproductive. 

So I like to teach my students to practice in sections.  If you take a section and then play that 4-10 times (depending on size), you get a much more productive practice session and learn the piece faster and easier. 

But sometimes it hard to notate on the student’s practice sheet just where those sections are.  Of course, you can always write down the measure numbers, but what fun is that?  So I like to create weird, funny names for the sections and even have the students help think of names for the sections.  This involves them and helps keep up their interest in practicing.  You can also name sections as the “star” section and put a star sticker on the page to denote it.  I found some really cute fairy stickers once and the girls loved to use them.  

I divided one student's piece into three sections

and called them Larry, Curly, and Moe.

Silliness, funny names, stickers—anything for the sake of good piano practice!

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