Classical Education

Louis Carrogis dit Carmontelle - Portrait de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Salzbourg, 1756-Vienne, 1791)
CLASSICAL MASTERS:  We were determined to finish up week 4 of our Intro to Classical Music class today, and that meant listening to lectures about and music by Mozart and Haydn this morning and afternoon. There are definitely worse things!

I have to think one could teach an entire university course on Mozart. Almost a shame to condense it down to a couple of hours, but when you're trying to cover thousands of years worth of music, something's got give.

We learned that Mozart was a prodigy, touring by the time he was 5 (depicted above, with his father on violin and his sister singing). He wrote his first symphony at age 8. Works we listened to included "Little G Minor Symphony," which he wrote as a child, "Piano Concerto No. 21," and the wildly complex "Jupiter Symphony," Mozart's 41st. Here's a graphical visualization of the latter, by Stephen Malinowski (YouTube user Smalin)

http://youtu.be/SiX3z_fOR5k

One of the lectures we watched showed clips from the marvelous film "Amadeus." Unfortunately, it's not streaming on Netflix or Amazon Prime, though it looks like we could rent it from Amazon for $2.99. Might just have to do that.  

We knew virtually nothing about Frederic Joseph Haydn before today, beyond a vague familiarity with some of his music. Turns out the guy is the father of the string quartet. That's a pretty big deal, wouldn't you say?!

                      "Haydn Portrait" by Ludwig Guttenbrunn - Photo Nevilley at en.wikipedia.

We certainly recognized the second movement from Haydn's "Emporer" (Op. 76 No. 3).

Written in 1797, Haydn reportedly played the tune every night before retiring in the months leading up to his death. Today, the music is the national anthem for both Austria and Germany (no doubt it's most familiar to us from hearing it played during Olympic medal ceremonies!).

You can hear a lovely version of it by the Verdis Quartet here. It's the one our professor shared with the class.

http://youtu.be/mBmCcSz6HWw

THEY OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES:  This afternoon, CJ and Annabelle started a movie making class they're pretty jazzed about. They'll meet for a couple hours weekly with 8 of their peers and an adult advisor. Together, they'll come up with the concept, a script, work on dialogue, acting, special effects, filming, editing and more. Sounds like a blast. 

This evening we screened the finished project last semester's class made. It was very creative, with lots of special effects. 

FOR BUBBY: We put together a special delivery today.  There's a young boy here in Washington that has been dealt a terrible hand in life.  Bubby Everson contracted a virus (cytomegalovirus) at birth. Usually it's harmless, but in Bubby's case, it left him deaf, autistic, with scoliosis, autism and cerebral palsy. His life span is expected to be severely truncated due to his ailments. 

Given that, Bubby's parents are trying to make his 9th birthday, Feb. 7, one to remember. 

Apparently Bubby loves getting mail, and REALLY loves stickers, so his parents are asking people to send their son some mail with stickers in it. They've set up a PO Box in their hometown of Graham, WA, and the story has gone viral.

You can Google Bubby's name and find any number of stories about him, or check out this link: http://q13fox.com/2015/02/03/family-plans-sons-9th-birthday-like-it-will-be-his-last-hopes-simple-act-by-others-will-help-fulfill-his-only-wish/

I had the kids dig through our craft drawer today and they came up with a nice little selection of stickers. 

If you want to send Bubby something, here's the address.

Bubby Everson
P.O. BOX 1142
Graham, WA 98338

Our stickers won't make it to him by his birthday, but somehow, we think Bubby won't mind having his birthday festivities drag out a few days - or weeks!

Bach in the Saddle Again

               Georgheeg [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], from Wikimedia Commons

COMPOSED:  We spent at least a couple of hours today trying to keep up with our "Introduction to Classical Music" class. Most of today's talks centered on Bach and Handel, both born in 1685.  

We learned a little bit about Bach's personal life. Turns out he was twice married and had 20-ish children. Yowza. His family was so big, at one point, his employer literally raised the roof on a building he was living in to add another couple of stories to accommodate his brood.

Pictured above, the Bach House in Köthen was his first home with his second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach (mother to 13 of his children).  She was an accomplished singer and had the job of transcribing many of Bach's compositions. 

Here is the first page of the Suite No. 1 in G major, in Anna Magdalena Bach's handwriting.

Unfortunately, Bach wasn't regarded as a musical genius until after his death, in 1750. (He was regarded as an accomplished organist, but it was widely thought at least a couple of his sons were better composers.) When Bach died in 1750, he didn't have much of an estate. What there was was parceled out to his children, including his hand-scribed sheet music, some of which was apparently sold for the price the paper could fetch. :/  Bach's surviving sons sank into conflict, and widow Anna was left with three daughters, living in poverty. When she died 10 years later, Anna was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.  Sad story.

On the other hand, George Frederic Handel seemed to have a gift for self promotion, and he was regaled as a virtuoso during his lifetime. His works, such as "Music for the Royal Fireworks" and "Water Music" were enjoyed by audiences in the hundreds of thousands. 

George Frideric Handel (left) and King George I on the River Thames, 17 July 1717, by Edouard Hamman (1819–88).

The class requires a fair amount of our time attention, but it's time well spent. And, of course, we're learning about so much more than just classical music. There are plenty of straight up history lessons woven in along the way. Good stuff!

TO THE TEST: We took a test today, from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services' Web site.  It was a 25 question self test to help one prepare for passing the civics portion of the naturalization test. 

Apparently when you're interviewed as part of the screening process, you can be asked up to 10 questions max, and need to answer 60 percent to pass. The site we checked out lists all of the 100 civics questions on the naturalization test, which is nice, as it means there are no surprises for test takers. 

Fortunately, the kids were able to pass the 25-question test easily (each 80 percent plus) without any studying or previews.

If you're interested in giving the test a go, check out this link: http://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/quiz/learners/study-test/study-materials-civics-test/naturalization-self-test-1 

The USCIS site also has an electronic flashcard set test takers can download to practice with, information about where to find help to study for the test, a video showing what to expect, and more. 

Hat tip to GPa for suggesting MPA give the citizenship test a go. 

Change of Venue

"Johann Sebastian Bach" by Elias Gottlob Haussmann -. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 

BACH TO BACH:  It's a good school day when your first hour is learning about and listening to Johann Sebastian Bach.  The painting above shows him holding a canon he'd written, a couple of years before his death in 1750.

Bach's works we listened to today included Toccata and Fugue in D minor, organ

http://youtu.be/ipzR9bhei_o

We also listened to Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582
http://youtu.be/1atQFLYbzuk
Both of the videos above are from a YouTube channel by a man who goes by smalin, but it looks like his real name is Stephen Malinowski. We've been watching his videos for years. It's fun to see the visualization of the instruments in a bold, graphic representation. 

CLUBBING: Over the past couple of weeks, we'd made a rather major shift. For the past four-plus years we've been attending classes in Shoreline (a city to the north) once or twice a week, as part of a homeschool cooperative up there. 

A couple of weeks ago, we made the decision to leave that co-op and join one in Seattle. The Seattle one, in fact, is in the midst of moving from a location in the north part of the city to a building at the north end of Queen Anne hill, not even five minutes by car for us. That fact will save us travel time, and it will make it possible for the kids to be involved in extra curricular activities. For instance, today, they checked out the first meeting of a social issues club. 

It was a lunchtime meeting, and the theme for today was water - specifically water scarcity. We learned that 70 percent of available water is used for farming, 20 percent is for industry, and 10 percent is used by individuals (think cooking, cleaning, drinking). We learned that 800 million people don't have access to enough water (frustratingly, there may be water available, but they can't get at it for lack for lack of a well, for instance). 

The group leader shared a story from a lesson plan from The Water Project about a young boy in an African country whose mother used to spend four hours a day walking to a 'nearby' stream and then carting water back to her family. When a well was installed in the family's village, it was a game changer, improving inhabitants' health, and freeing people up from the arduous, never-ending chore of water gathering, and allowing them to devote their time and energies elsewhere.

It was certainly an interesting way to spend a lunch hour, and the kids are looking forward to future meetings.The kids are also signed up for a movie making class at the Seattle school, and CJ's taking a history course, while Annabelle will have art twice a week. Here's to a new adventure and opportunities. 

OH SAY CAN YOU SEE: Check out these microchips.  If you look closely, you can see CJ and Annabelle's names on them!

                    Source: NASA OSIRIS-REx mission

Just kidding ... but they are there, NASA promises. Last June, we submitted our names via the Planetary Society to catch a ride on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu.

The mission, full name Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer, is set to launch in 2016.  Then, the kids and a presumably hundreds of thousands of others on the chip will spend a couple of years traveling to Bennu, arriving in 2018. They'll hang out there for over 400 days there before making their way back home with a sample capsule.

Here's a short video from the OSIRIS-REx folks about asteroids.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tOKCeW66ncM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

SOUNDS FAMILIAR: I have seen the same WIRED magazine story pop up on multiple homeschool forums and lists today. The headline: "The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Their Kids."

Interesting read, to be sure, and I certainly found a lot of parallels between the parents profiled and what we do here at MPA.

The Fifth Quarter

SUPER STUPOR: We're still recovering from the wild weekend that was the Super Bowl. We spent all day Saturday and several hours on Sunday morning getting ready for the big game. Of course, that involved making some Seahawks-themed cookies and cupcakes.

A few of the cookies were topped with some Nutella-flavored energy bites. A no bake nugget that included oatmeal, coconut, flax and chia seeds and honey, they were pretty darn tasty! (Recipe here: http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/nutella-energy-bites/)

Christian made a neat-o column out of balloons. 

Our staircase was decked out in streamers we collected on the opening day of this season, at the big NFL party and concerts near CenturyLink.

We had four TVs set up downstairs,and the place looked like family friendly sports bar. We gave it our all in game preparation, and cheered as hard as we could, but it was to no avail. The Seahawks lost in spectacular fashion, the outcome being determined on the very last play of the game, when, for reasons many will never understand, they opted to pass the ball when on the 1 yard line, and the pass was intercepted, game over. Heartbreaking for Hawks' fans! (That said, there were many other plays during the course of four quarters that could have changed the outcome - it's never just *one* play, is it?)

Anywho, the balloons and streamers are down, but our spirits are high. We're looking forward to seeing what they can do next season, and we absolutely can't wait until baseball season. Go Mariners!

FUN AND GAMES: I was deleting a bunch of old photos from my phone and came across a few I neglected to share involving games we've played with the kids over the past couple of months.  

Can you solve this riddle from 30 Second Mysteries (a great game!)?

And here's a scene from a fun game called Head Bandz, where you have to guess what you are (the word on the card you're wearing), by asking a series of questions with a time limit (30 seconds I think).

Here, the kids learned to play high stakes poker. We take our Fritos seriously.

And speaking of food that's very not good for you, here's a bonus shot, related to the game of baseball. The kids talked me into buying some Pop Tarts from Grocery Outlet a week or so ago. Would you believe the very first pack we opened produced a Seattle Mariners' Pop Tart!? It has to be a sign, I tell you. We're World Series bound, I say!

IN THE BOOKS: We completed all the lectures and the test for week 3 of our class all about Magna Carta/Charta.  Much of this week's discussion was about how, for hundreds of years, various individuals and groups have cited the Magna Carta to bolster their arguments and how Magna Carta has been interpreted so differently by so many. Some, like Sir Edward Coke, saw Magna Carta as a foundation of English life, underpinning everything, while others are rather dismissive of its import (for instance, Oliver Cromwell famously called it "Magna Farta").