Best thing from final week of dance class

One of the very fun things our dance studio does at the end of the semester is below. During the last week or so of classes, at the end of the class, they pull all of the students who are in class at the moment (so could be up to 5 classes at once) into the big studio and have them do their recital piece for each other. That's pretty usual for studios (LSB did the same)...but what CBA does that I love is that after watching each other, they then all take turns "dancing" each others dances!

The main group stays in the front to guide, while everyone else tries to dance along after watching. So you get an older tap group trying to do a much younger class's ballet piece... or in this case, older jazz dancers trying to do Henry's class's tap piece. I love this video clip so much - the older dancers all watching Henry to learn tap from him! And he's just doing his thing. All the feels!

And I find this especially relevant with the hubbub last week over comments made on GMA about "boys being embarrassed to take ballet". Dance, any sort of dance, is just as much of a sport as any other physical activity, and it should be recognized as such! I'm proud of my dancer, and this video shows that.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

A few months ago, I supervised Henry's field trip to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. They had been learning about ancient cultures in social studies, so the main point of going to the museum was to see the Egyptian exhibit there. It was pretty cool! Including an actual mummy.

You can see the mummy in the middle right, behind the headless statue.

Henry was pretty interested - was right up front while the docent was talking to them, engaged - I was proud of him!

After the Egyptian part, we chaperones each took our small groups (I had Henry and two girls) to whatever part of the museum they wanted to see. We wandered through some more ancient cultures.

And then I took the kids into my favorite part of this museum: the Faberge exhibit! For a relatively small arts museum, they have a huge collection! These were two of my favorite eggs; portrait mode on the iPhone really makes them pop.

 

In addition to the eggs, they also have a ton of other things made by the Faberge family, including these adorable little animal figurines

 And flower vases! These are tiny miniatures - the work is absolutely stunning.

Really glad that I got to spend a couple of hours there with Henry; Natalie has never been and I'd like to explore more, so I think we're going to try to get back there this summer. 

Henry gets a new axe

Henry has had an acoustic guitar for a while now (it was a Christmas present a couple of years ago), but he hadn't expressed much interest in it until recently. After moving, though, he started talking more about taking guitar lessons. I saw an ad that Music & Arts was having a sale where if you bought a month of guitar lessons, you got a guitar for free, so we headed to their open house for a trial group class. Henry was hooked from the start!

Music & Arts did their job - we walked out with the free guitar, but also needed to purchase an amp and a guitar case (shown strapped to his back below with said guitar inside)... but he was so excited about the whole thing that we just couldn't say no!

He immediately went upstairs and started playing the one chord/song he had learned. I've heard this multiple times already, and he gets better all the time! We are now about 2.5 months into lessons, and he's learned the main chords to quite a few songs.

I absolutely love the music side of his room - it shows his personality so well and makes him so happy!

Observation Week 2018: Henry tap

This year was Henry's first year trying tap. He'd always said before that it was too loud, but then he changed his mind and wanted to take it. Ms. Lynn, the new tap teacher, did a great job with the little ones! I like that during their warm ups, they each got to go solo across the floor.

Then it was time to practice going backwards - much harder!

And at the end, working on their recital piece. they definitely got better with each repetition! It's a fast piece of them, but they worked really hard.

Henry is continuing both tap and jazz this year at Charlottesville Ballet Academy; thanks to Ms. Lynn for getting Henry started in tap!

Observation week 2018: Henry jazz

I was also able to watch Henry's jazz and tap classes during Halloween week. His friend Garrett was in his jazz class, so I got a ton of photos and videos of Harry Potter and Mario dancing together, which could not have been cuter.

Who knew that "We Will Rock You" was the exact right speed/beat for learning pas-du-burre?

Fun dancing to Around The World - Ms. Danielle loves this song, as do we!

And rocking out some across-the-floors with a little hip hop twist.

And you'll see at the end of that last video where he ended standing against the wall next to his friend Lily. It was too cute that I put together this little triptych of photos. If they were older I'd say Lily just shut Henry down pretty hardcore :D

Rock Band Camp #2

In mid-August Henry returned to Bach2Rock for week 2 of summer Rock Band Camp. This time, when we arrived for the performance, we saw this sign that he DEFINITELY made in the window. I really do want to know where he heard about the Illuminati (shh, they'll hear us!).

Guitar is definitely serious business! He did great, and after this camp was fully inspired to start guitar lessons, which he has loved.

He played drum on one song, and piano on a couple of others. Love how much this kid is into playing music.

First up: the song that started Henry's guitar career - Feel It Still! He learned the full guitar part of this song, and for the longest time that's all he knew, so we listened to that song OVER and OVER again for weeks. It's his favorite!

The kids learned a classic, on which Henry also played guitar, yet I never heard this one again after camp. I guess it didn't strike a chord the way the previous one did!


And, finally, piano on another old classic.


Wednesday was actually Henry's last piano lesson at Bach2Rock; we had his final guitar lesson there on Monday. As we get closer and closer to our move date (less than two weeks now!), we start to hit these "last" events more and more, so there are definitely a lot of feelings being processed.

Rock Band Camp #1

When we were planning summer camps last spring, Henry asked to attend rock band camp again this summer. He loved it last year, and because of schedule were were able to send him twice this summer! The first week he went was in mid-July. On Friday, they performed in the green space outside of the school for parents and anyone else who wanted to listen in.

There were quite a few campers there for half day camp; they formed a band all together named "First Dimension".

 Check out my little rocker!

 

There was some time needed to set up all of the equipment, and then First Dimension was ready to play "Should I stay or should I go" by The Clash.

They had a couple more songs together, but that one was definitely my favorite. Then, we were fortunate to see Henry perform a few more songs. Henry and one other girl were there all day, whereas the rest of the kids were only there half the day. Therefore, she and Henry got to perform a few additional songs, with the help of their teacher Mr. Cedric. I was a BIG fan of their first one :)


She and Henry played a couple more together, but they aren't songs that I really know, so I'm going to skip ahead to Henry's two solos. The first was a duet with Mr. Cedric on guitar: a rock song that Henry wrote about his favorite songs.


And finally, Henry sang one of those favorites: Ophelia by the Lumineers. So proud of him for getting up in front of a crowd outside and doing this!

Henry's piano performance

In 2016 and 2017 we held our "Punch, Pie, and Piano" recital with our group from dance, when a couple of girls were unable to attend their scheduled recitals. This year, the event was a bit more hastily put together (for a few reasons), but we were still able to hold it! I was very excited that Henry really blossomed since the previous year, playing much longer and involved pieces than he had previously. Without further ado: Henry's two recital pieces!

Hist first piece is so jazzy. It gets slightly faster throughout. Also, he has this one memorized which is why you can see the same sheet music in both videos.
Side note -I love Natalie's friend Bella in the corner doing her shoulder-shimmy to it.

His second piece is a bit longer; he didn't have this one memorized but worked at it really hard!

The other kids also did a great job, although this time I didn't record any of them. Natalie's friend Lily played "Piano Man" by Billy Joel, which led to a great sing along for all of us adults! 

Side note - Henry has now, a few months later, totally gotten into Piano Man, and I'm trying to get him to listen to other Billy Joel songs now too. 

Recital 2018: Henry

This year's recital was special to me, as it was the first time that both Natalie and Henry were in the same recital! That's right, Henry finally outgrew the Rising Stars program, and graduated to Jazz I, so he got to be in the Contemporary recital with Natalie. And man, is this kid cute when he's dancing on stage!

 

 

These two pictures slay me. Love that little smile!

 

He especially enjoyed class because there were two other boys in there with him. His friend Chase (in the back of the photo below) we've known for years, and the other little boy became a friend during class. They're in Jazz II together this year again!

The seriousness in this final pose (which he did lose when he broke into a smile after) cracks me up. Both he and his friend Lily were so focused. Dance is serious business, you guys!

Q3 and Q4 school awards

Let's wrap up the school year posts (now that we're a month out from the end of the school year!) with the last two awards ceremonies of the year. First up - at the Q3 awards, Henry won two - the super star writing award and an attendance award.

And for Q4, he won the excellence in math award! I didn't get to see this award ceremony, as Evan and I split up for the kids' ceremonies since they were at different times and we both needed to work. But I did get a picture of the award after!

I went to Natalie's ceremony - we weren't sure what award she was getting, and although it turned out to be just attendance this time, we were so proud of the work she did all year.

Really, we once again got nothing but glowing references to Natalie's behavior all year. She was on honor roll the entire year, including getting all As for two of the 4 quarters (Q2 and Q3). She even got this special "star" from her teacher for being such a wonderful kid in class (you can read why below).

She's certainly our daughter - everyone has more fun when we all follow the rules! :)

This year, as every other year, I took photos of all of the work that the kids brought home. It's a great way for me to keep a digital copy of everything they make/do without having LOADS of papers sitting around. Heck, I only keep the stuff I really like or is special, and I still have a giant file on the shelf downstairs! Anyway, I wanted to share a couple of my favorites that the kids did in art class. The top row is each of their abstract collages they put together; the bottom row is a Picaso-style self portrait they each did. Natalie's are on the left, Henry's on the right. Great job kiddos!

Henry's 2nd grade musical

After Natalie had been in multiple school performances (the history symposium, her chorus concert - haven't posted that yet), we felt really bad when we had to tell Henry that he wasn't going to be able to be in his second grade musical. See, it was scheduled on the night before Foxfield, and we always head to Charlottesville on that Friday afternoon. Henry had worked so hard on the musical (including practicing singing along with the songs on the school's website), though, that we felt really bad having to make that decision.

So...Evan and I decided to put what we want aside, in favor of our son's performance, and not leave until after his musical was over. This meant arriving to Foxfield late in the evening and missing our delicious penne a la vodka dinner that we always have with our friends...but it was worth it for Henry.

Back to the musical! The performance was soccer themed (or football, if you prefer), as you can probably tell from the pics below. Henry was the very first one out and up on the stands!

Each class wore a different color "jersey", and their music teacher was the referee!

The kids did a really great job. We'd been hearing these songs for weeks, but it was so much fun to watch them all sing together, along with their dance moves.
Here they are singing "Kick It!"

"The Beautiful Game" (in two parts)

And finally, "Number One"

Great job, Henry and all the other kids!

Henry's 8th birthday party

Three Henry posts in a row! April is always big for him, since it's his birthday. This year we were fortunate to be able to hold his birthday party just two days after his actual birthday. Henry asked for a Star Wars themed party, where he wanted to watch The Force Awakens (which we surprised him with as a birthday present).

While everyone was arriving, the boys had fun having some freeform light sabre/sword battles in the living room.

They then headed to the basement to watch the movie; they made it mostly through before a bunch of the boys got a bit bored. Not everyone likes to sit motionless through a 2 hour movie like my 8 year old! So it was time to come back upstairs for birthday cake.

Happy 8th birthday to my handsome guy!