Busy Summer

What a terrific, but busy summer! I have had a wonderful time starting a new class to obtain a reading endorsement. The classes have been very interesting and I would love to learn more about the brain research that was discussed in our first week of classes. That was totally fascinating. However, I will be honest; it has been very overwhelming. Since I have a music degree, I have felt most inadequate in the vocabulary and terminology of the course. On the other hand, I am a total "book freak" and have a passion for learning new things, so I think that what I learn will be totally valuable to my personal development and my professional development. I have already found many techniques that I can use in my chorus classes.

I've spent most of the summer at the pool with my son the fish! Each visit, I dove head-first into a pool-side lounge chair with a book in one hand and sunscreen in the other. Most visits to the pool were usually accompanied by a visit to get ice-cream (my favorite thing on earth besides my family and music) or a grape or cherry slush (my son's favorites). After swimming the entire summer and completing level five swimming lessons, my son announced that he would like to take Jr. Life Saving next year. Yeah! That means more reading time for me!

My son is addicted to television, so everyday I had to play "Meanie Mommie" and say turn it off and go outside! Read a book. Play a game. Being that it was the Sahara Desert this summer and temperatures were as hot as I remember in my Mississippi childhood, I think I played more board games this summer than I have in my entire life. I wouldn't trade a minute of that time with my son! We had a blast!

My daughter spent the majority of July on mission trips. She started with SPLASH Bartow (Show people love and share Him). This is a week-long event where children and adults flood the community with service projects. The last two weeks she has been in St. Vincent, which is a small island in the Caribbean. The people of this island are very poor and have very limited supplies. My daughter has a total new understanding of what luxuries that she has been offered.  She also has many wonderful new stories about the provisions and grace of our wonderful God.

I worked a lot at school and home this summer getting ready for the coming school year. I really am excited about using the strategies that I learn in this class with my students at school. I already know I am going to use the (I'm not sure what it's called) vowel holding method with my chorus students to get them to sing their diction correctly. This method is where you draw the line under the vowel and you hold it out while you are tracing the line with your finger. I hope this will work in addition to our open-vowel sounds that we use with hand signals. It could help to apply this method using whole words. I will post how well it works.

School starts this week and I know how busy things will be. I hope to have a good bit to post next week-end!

Take care,
T