The boys' piano teacher, Cheryl Reeder, holds a practice challenge each year leading up to the competitions. This means that her students all compete for points that they get for time practicing each day, the quality of their lessons, and performances. And then, when it is time for the Spring Recital, she awards fun prizes like gift cards and trophies.
Last year, Chase took first place in the practice challenge, and Avery took third place. And this year (2015), Chase took first place in the practice challenge, and Avery took third place. Ha! So, they got trophies and movie tickets and a gift card to IHOP. Super fun! It's a fun way to get the kids to work extra hard on their practicing and put in effective time to improve their skills. And that is why every time we go to a recital in the Reeder home, ALL the students are well-prepared and perform just beautifully.
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| This was the only photo I managed to take on the night of the Spring Recital. They were just outside our house as we were getting ready to walk over to the Reeders' house. And, of course, their biggest little fan was there to photobomb. Ha! |
Another fun thing about this year's recital was that Chase and Avery performed music that they DIDN'T use for their competitions. That means that they each had another piece that they learned well enough to perform at the recital over and above their competition pieces. Very impressive!
Here is the video for Avery's Spring Recital performance, May 2015.
And this is the video for Chase's Spring Recital performance, May 2015.
And finally, we got to add one more special event to this season: Courtney's first piano recital! Hooray!
Courtney actually started piano lessons back in September, but with a different teacher under completely different circumstances. Her teacher was Cindy Gunderson, who is a friend of mine and the mother of two of the boys who came to our "I Love America" class this year. Cindy and I made arrangements to trade piano lessons for Courtney for having her boys come to my class. And she actually came to our house every week before our class to spend a half hour with Courtney on the piano. It was great!
Cindy is from Canada and used a different program from our other kids called the Royal Conservatory program. But Cindy doesn't have a large number of students because she is a mother of 4 who homeschools; therefore, she didn't have recitals or competitions. She did, however, have Courtney participate in the Royal Conservatory testing program, for which she had to have specific skills and memorized pieces to perform. Courtney's test for the beginner level was on May 15th. And the following week, Cindy joined with a couple of other piano teachers she knows to put together a little recital in which Courtney was able to participate. It was her very first recital and she was very well-prepared and performed beautifully!
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| A big smile before the recital showing us that she is ready to perform! |
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| Posing after the recital with a little buddy. |
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| Here is our little beauty after a lovely performance at her very first recital! |
We have loved Cindy as a piano teacher, but this summer we will be making a change. Our "I Love America" class is over and we will not be doing it again next year. And Cindy and her family are moving to a new home a bit farther away from us. Therefore, we are moving Coco to the same piano teacher as the boys, Cheryl Reeder. I'm super excited about it because Cheryl has been such a great teacher for Chase and Avery. She instills great discipline into her students and they develop their skills very well. AND...she lives right around the corner! That means that ALL of the kids can just walk to their lessons, which I love! I'm really looking forward to seeing how Courtney develops with this new teacher. It should be great for her!
P.S. We do have one more little guy around here who loves the piano. Our Trey likes to do whatever the bigger kids can do, so he will plunk around on the piano frequently. He likes to play "songs," during which he bounces around in rhythm while playing, and then indicating the end of the song by playing one long note on the lowest note of the keyboard (or sometimes the highest!). It's the cutest thing! Other times, he will turn on the demo music on the piano and just sit there and listen, listen, listen. He pays very close attention to every little note. And sometimes he will get up and dance. It's clear that he loves music, so I'm excited to see what musical talent he will develop someday.
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| Look at this cutie, just sitting at the piano, listening to the demo music. He concentrates so hard as he is listening, it's almost like he is downloading it or something! One of these days he's going to start playing Fur Elise out of nowhere. Ha! |
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