Piano

Allison and Jacob's piano teacher has a cup with the Suzuki songs written on slips of paper.  Allison likes to pull the song titles out of the cup and play them in "random" order.  We've created a similar cup at home, and it has gotten Allison excited about practicing.  Well, excited Monday-Wednesdays - she insists she doesn't have to practice Friday or weekends.

Jacob practices every day, mostly without being told.  He likes to master the songs, make up his own songs, gets upset if you correct him, but manages to learn at least one hand's part to one full song per week.

At first, I wasn't too happy that Jacob was on the "waiting list" for almost a year before starting lessons.  Allison started in first grade, Jacob in second grade.  This puts Allison at a three year head start.  That being said, Jacob is going to pass Allison more quickly than I anticipated.  For example, Allison began putting together the right and left hands of the song "Cuckoo" about 2 years into lessons.  Jacob is almost ready to learn that after 7 months.  Even now, she hasn't totally mastered Cuckoo, and since then has learned two more "together songs" - for a total of 6.  Jacob knows three of the six already. 

One reason is probably that he's been hearing the songs for several years, so they are familiar already.  Also, as mentioned before, he practices twice as much.  Another reason is that as Allison's songs have gotten harder, it's taken her longer to move on (and we've also added sight reading, which is harder for her than we thought). 

So, I'm plotting ways to get the kids in different books, or on different series, so they can't compete with one another quite as obviously.  Jacob seems to be pretty good at the piano, but it's the one thing we've managed to get Allison to "stick with" even though she's learning slowly and frequently (very, very frequently) grumps about it.