Picture Books By Ramona

At the end of fourth grade, Bethke kids usually get to write a story and make a picture book for their book buddies. Since Ramona had two book buddies that year, she was tasked with a double picture book assignment. Despite feeling stressed about writing an extra story and getting the books "just right," she was able to produce two darling books for her first grade reading buddies. 

 

Nailed It! Sugar Rush

Our family occasionally enjoys watching a show called "Nailed It!" where amateur bakers are given various baking challenges and their completed projects look hilarious when compared with the professional confections they were striving to create. We also like a show called "Sugar Rush" where professional baking teams compete against each other to wow a panel of judges in three rounds of extremely rushed baking. We were watching a lot of these shows about the time Ramona turned 10, so I planned a cake decorating party for her. It finally happened in May after she got sick and we rescheduled.

What made this party especially interesting was that by the time we rescheduled, we had completely demo'ed the kitchen, and a huge tarp was hung between the family room and where the dining room used to be. I had frozen some cake rounds ahead of time, back when we still had an oven, so we used those and just set up a big table in the family room to host the party. 

Ramona's friends enjoyed pizza and strawberries while they watched some baking shows to get warmed up for their challenge.

Before the cake decorating, though, they had to decorate some aprons!

Pretty soon, there was a lot going on in our little family room. Girls were scooping batter into our mini-cupcake maker, and they were divided up into two teams for cake decorating.

Ramona, Mia, and Emersyn were assigned to decorate the "All-Star" cake. Ella and April were assigned to decorate the "Flower Power" cake.

Fondant was tricky, but with a little help they did a great job! And they loved snacking on the leftovers.

Ramona attaching the fondant stars, Mia making cupcakes, and Emersyn eating cupcakes:

All-Star Cake:

Flower Power Cake:

I think this cupcake has a unicorn horn made out of fondant?

Toward the end, all the girls had had so much sugar, they were at the top of their silliness game. At one point these girls stuffed balloons up their shirts and pretended to be very pregnant.

It was a sticky, messy, sugary party--with lots of leftovers sweets!

My kind of lemonade

It's been a lemon of a year, right? Have I made lemonade? Sometimes. Some days I feel like I was refereeing a lemon fight with my family (or just joining in), so by the end we were all cranky and covered with bruises and lemon juice. Not to mention--we had a huge mess to clean up. Other days, we remembered to add sugar and ice cubes, so things were sweet and chill. 

I will say this about this past year: life gives me quarantine, I make string players. Pretty dorky, I know. But fairly accurate. When everything shut down last April, I used a lot of the homebound time to double down on Ramona and Mika's string playing skills. I'm certain their hands were on their instruments more than they would have been if school and activities had all been in full swing. Instruction was far from perfect--sequencing of technique was not really a consideration, and we didn't weave much music theory in, either. The goal was just to keep them playing and find music that interested them. 

The result: 

1) I prevented them from quitting. That alone is sometimes a huge feat, especially when kids tell you they want to quit every week.

2) They found their sound. Bowing stringed instruments is hard, and there is no substitution for repetition. They played often enough that sound production was no longer a struggle. Their bows weren't constantly bumping into other strings and they could consistently avoid most extraneous screeches and squeaks. 

3) By playing familiar songs, they trained themselves to listen and adjust for intonation errors. Sometimes they are lazy and don't self-correct as they should. But when they are actually trying, the left hand fingers land in place pretty well, and usually slide to the right spot when the initial target is missed.

All that because we didn't leave the house much for a few months.

Now I am finding myself in another partial quarantine. Yesterday I got an email from the County Health Department with a specific quarantine order for Paula because a classmate of hers tested positive for COVID. She isn't allowed to leave the house for the next week as we monitor for symptoms, and we aren't permitted to have visitors in the house, so I have had to contact all my music students to make accommodations for that. Paula switched to remote school beginning yesterday, and this morning all the kids are at school except for her. It's just the two of us at home. 

So I taught her how to the play the violin.

I had an extra half-size violin sitting in the basement. It had previously been strung like a viola while Mika had been learning on it, and I tucked it away after I got her an actual 13-inch viola. Before that, it was Ramona's first violin. Paula watched me excitedly as I restrung the instrument, turning it back into a violin and teaching her the string names. I had her look at the first few pages of a beginner violin book to learn the parts of the instrument as I tuned it. Then we plucked a few strings before she had to start her class on the computer. 

While she did that, I dug up an old "Resonance" shoulder rest that had been replaced by some better "Kun" accessories. It had been fitted for a 3/4 size violin, so I tried taking it out to the garage and smacking it with a hammer until the grips were the right distance apart for a Paula's half-size violin. Next problem: curvature. "Kun" shoulder rests have a much more defined curve that, in my opinion, fits better on the shoulder and collar bone. "Resonance" rests are rather flat in comparison, and don't provide enough lift. I needed some material--something firm, but not too hard. I found an old shoe insole that I had ripped out of a brand new pair of shoes to make room for my orthotics. It was made out of foam and fabric and was never worn in a shoe so it didn't smell like foot. I grabbed some scissors and cut it up to see if I could create an attachment for that flat shoulder rest.

Is this really how I spent my free time today? Appalling, I know. But I wasn't planning to teach Paula the violin today, it just kind of happened. My actual long-term goal is to teach her how to play the cello, because I am pretty sure she is more of a cellist than I violinist, but I don't have an extra quarter-size cello sitting around my house, and her fingers are still so little . . .

Anyway . . . voila! A semi-suitable shoulder rest!

When Paula came down for her break from remote school, she told me she had a full hour until she needed to be back. So I taught her how to hold the violin, how to pluck the strings while it was up on her shoulder, and even how to play a couple of fingered notes on the D string. 

You can tell she is concentrating more on those fingered notes! It was a lot for just one "lesson," so we stopped and she read a book until it was time to go back to class. 

This is my kind of lemonade.