Today is the last day of classes. The entire morning was devoted to the regular schedule as usual. The one thing different was that Tim joined us for breakfast arriving last night from his travels. We thank our
Dad for keeping him safe during his trips.
From 8-9am - Devotions led by Eugene.
From 9-9:45 am - Psalm 138 for meditation and journal writing of thoughts; led by Tim
From 10-11 am - Theory class by David
Melody readying topics: last difficult rhythm notes; locating other notes on the staff given DO; music test. On the music test, asked 10 students individually in the next room to read rhythms, sing the scale with hand signals, conduct, read the tones for 4 bars of a song. Average score was 87.5% of a very simple test, but I could tell that only 3.5 hours of teaching Kodaly music aids is not a magic bullet for instant music reading: most students lacked the confidence to decode rhythms and melodies, and many could not sing the scale in-tune by themselves. Almost all did very well in conducting basic beat patterns. Very instructive though to hear these students individually.
From 11am -1pm - Rehearsing the songs for the graduation ceremony tomorrow - led by Eugene & Mari
The rest of the afternoon was spent in finishing up the crafts to prepare for VBS next week.
At around 8pm, we paused from our cutting session to celebrate two occasions: one is for a birthday celebrant and a much coveted college admission of choice for another.
For David and Bess, we experienced for the first time the usual custom here for celebrants. Instead of receiving gifts, the celebrant served the cake to the guests and using the right hand, fed a piece of cake first to the oldest person in the group followed by the others present. What a beautiful picture of serving and hospitality!
Next,Tim handed out the outfits to be worn for the graduation ceremony. These are souvenirs or mementos from SFI for participating in the music teaching class. Thank you so much Tim!
We completed cutting the craft materials by 10:30pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment