Monday, January 21, 2013

Little Red Riding Hood



Today is my first guest post, by my sister, about our daughters first Theater experience:

Hi, this is Kathryn here sneaking in a guest post before I have my baby :)

Since Jess is visiting until then we've been taking the kids to just about every kid-friendly activity we could think of. On Saturday we chose the Guelph symphony orchestra's retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.  All it was was 6 members of the orchestra, the conductor and the storyteller. They had little theme songs for each character, musical animal sounds for the birds and animals, and even sinister background music when the wolf was up to no good. The kids (my little music lover especially) were entranced. They kept it short enough to keep the kids attention and then had each member of the orchestra show off their instrument and make some music to show what each one could do. Then out came some boxes of toy instruments for the patient little munchkins to play with.  There was some free play with the instruments, then some pretend orchestra activities before it was time to go.  On the way out the kids were invited to take a closer look at the instruments and talk to the musicians up front. It was really sweet and well done.  I really liked how they used a story that most children already know to teach them something new about music :)

Friday, January 11, 2013

Audio Books

Now that the holidays are over, I'm going to try to blog a little more consistently then I was before the break. I'm still at my parents house with my kids, while my husband and dog hold down the fort back home.

I've decided to begin a project while I'm here. My project? To have important people in mine and my kids lives make audio books for my kids. I started by taking a trip to Value Village, where they sell good condition used kids books for 1$ each. Instead of reading through them all, I just grabbed a whole stack of non liscenced books (I hate liscenced products like Caillou, Dora and Barbie) and bought them all. We ended up with 22 books in total, not all were great, but I really didn't have time to read them all in the store. Even with two other adults chasing my kids around.

The next step is to figure out how to record them... any ideas on programs?

After that, I'll burn them onto individual CD's, and place matching alphabet stickers on the CD and book that go together. The CD's will be kept in a small fabric CD case with a zipper, which will be kept in a basket with a discman and the books.

My two year old loves headphones, or "ears" as she calls them, so I think this should be a hit!

Post Script, Happy New Year! What goals have you set for the next 12 months?