Comments

This is amazing! Good luck with the first lessons! That is awesome-I love the violin pattern! Good for you! "a page on the Suzuki philosophy, boiled down to its essence", you said...

Laurie-- I know you're some kind of dual-major music / journalism writing genius, so I'm curious whether you could say a few words about how you write briefly (!) about something you care about; and who's reading that (target audience), and how that affects the writing...

[[Of course I'm projecting-- as I recently now have larger groups of younger students than usual, and I was just pressured into writing for them, which I had so far resisted.... (Ludwig Wittgentstein would be proud of me!)-- though, it was good... ]]

What beautiful violins! Thanks for sharing with us. Greetings,
Laurie, that`s great.
The rules thing made me think of how I often do things here in Japan. I hate rules (;)) so I try and think of it more in terms of how kids need some kind of structur ein order to grow and be free. You know, just so they are cvomfortable enough to fly. One of the things I do in big classes is have a clear lesson sequence that has names and a huge cardboard picture of a bus which chugs along underneath the names which are always written up on the blackboard. So two class leaders come to the front and start moving the bus along to the nextpart. Then they have a kind of goofy `here we go shout` which is repsonded to with gestures and then the leaders shoud out its `time` and everybodtyshouts back Okey dokey.
Idle thoughts ,
Buri Gabriel, You look whomever you are talking to straight in the eyes and say what you want to say, from the heart. Writing is no different from speaking; you just have to know how to find your audience's eyes and know your own heart.

Buri, I love the bus idea!

Fabulous, just fabulous. I love seeing youngsters exposed like this. The color and creativity each displayed in making their violin makes the project so worthwhile. Bravo!
Bill I just put up the template for the egg carton violin coloring page, and the Suzuki philosophy statement. Teachers, please feel free to use anything that helps your program! Laurie, this is fantastic! You have taken a very large piece of work and turned it into an adventure. I'm excited reading about it. Please keep updating us.

PS. I admire your energy. Keep it up!

I am in complete awe of anyone who can teach 52 kids at the same time. what an enviable position you are in,,,influencing 50 kids at once about violin!? wow.

interesting to see that while adults are busy emulating the varnish of the cremonese, the kids have their own ideas..hmm. thank you for not giving them each a brown pen!

Aww! Buy me an egg carton so I can make one too!