Irish Music School Day Camp

crappy lighting + not-so-great camera = less than clear photos. this was the best one I managed. I'm not sure why LMS's hand is in front of her face, but they're lined up to do a soft shoe dance.

LMS attended a day camp {her first!} two weeks ago. It was a week-long version of the Irish sampler class she'll be taking in the fall, and she loved it!

They did crafts (painted t-shirts, made mosaics, painted round cardboard boxes to use as bodhrans, and made fairy dolls), danced (soft shoe for the younger kids, soft shoe and hard shoe for the older kids), sang, played tin whistle or fiddle, played the bodhran, cooked (scones and Irish soda bread), and learned a little Irish. The last day the parents came in the afternoon and got to watch the kids show off what they'd learned.

The Little Miss chose to do tin whistle for the camp, but will probably do fiddle during the regular class. Below is a video (my first- hopefully it works!) of her group playing Hot Cross Buns on the tin whistle. It reminded me a lot of elementary school recorders, but the older kids had a lot better sound quality and didn't sound like recorders.

This was an interesting experience for me. I dropped LMS off at 9 and picked her up at 3. The hours in between were just for me- no schoolwork (we used one of our vacation weeks that week), no running off to this activity or that one, just time to do my things.

It gave me a taste of what my life would be like if she attended public school.

She'd be gone all day and I'd have the house to myself.

Initially that sounds like a nice thing, but reality sets in real quick.

It would be very quiet.

And lonely.

But I would probably have finished up all my projects a long time ago, because of all that time to myself.

Or maybe not. I actually wasted (?) a lot of time reading and not feeling guilty about it. I found out in high school that I am much better at managing my time and being efficient when I am busy (cross country season, for example) and have to budget my time.

However, I wouldn't change our decision to homeschool. It was a nice change of pace, but I like having LMS home with me- she's such a funny kid- and I still manage to get a lot of projects done (eventually).