September felt a little stressful. There were plenty of fun things going on, and I got lots of little projects around the house taken care of in the time the kids were at school, but gearing up to start my KinderKeys piano classes had me walking through everything with a little gray Eeyore cloud hanging over my head. Starting a business is stressful! I ended up very glad that I had taken care of the keyboard and headphone purchases last year for the mini-class I taught--that class was sort of like my running start for this year and I can't imagine trying to start from scratch this year as I had contemplated doing. But making up fliers and sending emails and talking up all sorts of random people to generate interest . . . somehow I didn't calculate that into my hourly wage when I was thinking about what a good use of my work efforts starting this studio would be! But ultimately I knew I was offering a good product for a good price and that even if I wasn't me I would have been interested in the classes, so that gave me the courage and chutzpah to keep at it until I filled three of the four classes I had hoped to teach! I'm going to go ahead and count that as success. I'm teaching the carry-over class from last year (even though one of the children moved and the other lives the next town over and didn't feel up to continuing piano on top of starting full-day kindergarten, leaving the class a bit off-balance but still fun), a class for 6-8 year olds, and a preschool class for 4-6 year olds.
Honestly, now that we're into the swing of things it is so fun. The school-age class is cruising along fast. Those kids pick up skills like they've been doing this for years, and there's a great energy in the class. But I think my favorite thing each week is my preschool class (it helps that it doesn't come immediately before or after another class). I sincerely believe that early exposure to learning music actually changes a child's brain, making it more receptive to sound and musical expression. Most people won't start a child on piano until age 7 or 8--"when they can read" is the guideline many piano teachers give. But I am convinced that starting them younger, as long as it is in a truly preschool friendly environment (often not the case with private lessons), gives them a gift that will be with them their whole lives. Sera is such a case study for this. I started her in the pilot class last February, just after her 4th birthday. It is now a little over six months later, and within the last few days she has sat down at the piano and played through not only several of her songs from class, but also picked out the melodies of Beethoven's ninth symphony, a theme from the Nutcracker (have I mentioned how much she loves the Nutcracker?), and "Where is Thumbkin" (a Frere Jaques variation we used in Joy School a couple of weeks ago). Certainly these things can take place at the later ages as well, but when children start young, I think they develop an awareness of pitch and rhythm that they lose the ability to get later on. I consider Theo's ability to pick up French pronounciation as well as he did when he was six to be another example of the same thing. So anyway, all that is to say that I am loving these little preschoolers of mine (two of them have possibly the tiniest hands I have ever seen on a piano keyboard). The classes are 30 minutes each, and we usually spend about ten minutes of that in some sort of movement/rhythm game, with the rest at the keyboards, learning up and down and rhythms and keyboard topography. Even though they're chugging through the books at about half the speed of my older class, when I think about them playing in a couple of years, it sort of makes my heart sing!
Anyway, despite all my pre-teaching anxiety (the classes started on Sept. 20), the first half of the month was pretty fun as well. Darling Addy celebrated her eighth birthday! We had such a fun "Around the World" party for her, and I made "cake balls" for the first time after seeing a bunch of oohing and ahhing over them around the internet. They worked out great as mini-globes, but were awfully sweet. Though only three of her friends made it over for her party, it wound up being pretty awesome--one of my favorites, I think. She and her guests dressed up with a bit of international flair (we had a Parisian, a Bahamian, and a Guatemalan, while Addy went Hawaiian), and together we traveled the world from China (origami and fortune cookies) to India (Bollywood dancing with ankle bracelets) to Africa (face painting) to Egypt (pyramid building) to France (pedicures) to Italy (making pizzas) to Mexico (pinata). Seriously so fun!
September is also Johnny Appleseed month in Indiana, so we got to go to the Johnny Appleseed Festival, which is quite possibly the best festival ever in the world. We enjoyed time-traveling back to the 1800s where we ran into Abe Lincoln and Mr. Appleseed himself, as well as a ventriloquist puppeteer and medicine man, and several fun bluegrassy music groups. Of course the big draw was all the fun food, from the popped-in-an-enormous-black-cauldron kettle corn to fresh-pressed-in-front-of-your-eyes apple cider to homemade rootbeer to cooked-in-a-ginormous-pot-all-day soup to "sweet tater delite" to organic-right-down-to-the-sugar caramel apples. Oh, it was a happy day. This year we gave each kid $3-5 (what's not to love about a free festival where a few bucks will actually buy some things) and let them decide which things they wanted, so they took extra time deciding on everything and did lots of sharing to make their dollars last a little longer. We checked out the civil war cannons and stopped by some war camps full of weary soldiers before plunking ourselves down on the hillside to just enjoy the smells and sounds of a time long ago. I don't think I would really have done well as a 19th century woman in the long term (we saw a bit of their medical practices and . . . I don't think they would have worked out for me, not to mention the housework load!), but I don't think I would mind moving back in time for a few weeks a year or so. The sounds and the smells and the sweet harmony with nature--well, in some areas we've regressed more than progressed in the last hundred some-odd years.
Other fun activities for the month included a Saturday of apple-picking, another of bowling, plenty of time outdoors in the gorgeous autumn sunlight, me putting up little things around the house that make it that much more of a home (our bedroom is finally the lovely retreat we've been looking forward to!), and trying to squeeze in some volunteering days at school (I'm not really awesome at this, but I'm trying to get in a couple of times a month). I've started picking one of the kids up for lunch every now and then, and it's led to some great conversations about school--by the time school is over, the kids don't really feel like rehashing anything (or if they do, it's usually just recess), but over a lunch they'll tell me about something funny their teacher did, or about the assignments they worked on--stuff I rarely get after they get home. I've become more and more grateful for this wonderful school my kids have to go to, and the great skills they're learning there, from respect (which they tend to need some reminders on) to computer skills to pushing beyond their comfort levels in reading and math, to art and music (oh I could go on about their fabulous music teacher). They have really good friends. I appreciate that so much. Theo especially has a couple of good friends who keep him in line by not talking to him when he wants to motormouth off in class, but who also appreciate his cleverness and sense of humor.
All around us, the leaves have begun changing color, and the corn fields we drive past every Sunday on the way to church have turned from green to brown. We're looking forward to some beautiful pictures and some of that cold crisp fall air as we launch toward October. Fall has always been my favorite season wherever we've lived, but I have to say that autumn in Indiana is really something special. We're drinking in every moment of it!
