• Home
  • About
  • Living Faith
  • Home and Family
  • Home Education
  • Books
  • Recommended Resources

Kept and Keeping

~ Rest in Grace, Labor in Love

Kept and Keeping

Tag Archives: Music

Growing a Love for Music: A Review of the Prodigies Music Lifetime Membership (Plus a Discount Code!)

30 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home Education

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Curriculum Review, Elementary Music, Home Education, homeschooling, Music, Preschool Music, Preschool Prodigies, Prodigies Music

In this review I’ll give a bit of history as to how we decided on the Prodigies Music Program for our kid’s education, a discount code for my readers, and then some examples of how our kids have benefited from the program over the past nine months!  This post contains affiliate links, but I’ve been promoting Prodigies to friends long before signing up as an Ambassador–you’ll see some of the reasons why I believe in it so much in this post.  

My husband and I both love music.  And we love sharing it with out kids.  But it’s hard to find the time to introduce them to the basics of music theory with my husband’s busy work schedule and the fact that I’m already teaching them every other subject in our homeschool.

We looked at local general music classes, and probably would have gone that route if we hadn’t found Prodigies.  We sampled the videos they made available for free on YouTube, and I was impressed.  So impressed that after crunching numbers and comparing our options, we bought the Lifetime Membership for our family.

Here’s why the Prodigies Lifetime Membership beat the local class option hands-down:

  • We paid one price for the whole family for life–within just one year of weekly local classes for two children, we would have paid the same amount for FAR less instruction.  This would be even more economical for a larger family.
  • We can do music lessons every day in the comfort of our own home–this again ups the amount of instruction and guided practice, allowing kids to go deeper and practice regularly without mom having to muster up the energy or having to waiting on the next class day to roll around.
  • We have access to all the materials (videos, workbooks, songbooks) both online and as downloadable files for our computer.  This means I have an awesome curriculum (and my kids have a fun music teacher!) available any time it fits our needs or schedule.
  • While I’m sure the local classes are nice, they aren’t using the Prodigies program–which is colorful, engaging, and focuses not only on meaningful play with pitch to train a child’s ears, but also on learning to translate between the color names, number names, letter names, AND solfege names of the notes of the major scale.  Most teachers wouldn’t dream that teaching all of this at such early ages is possible.  But it is!  Mr. Rob does it!  And my kids are getting it!
  • The team at Prodigies Music is constantly adding to their program, which means that the money I put down for our membership goes farther and farther.  They now have a complete preschool program (what my kids are working through now), have started publishing lessons in the primary program, have tons of fun supplemental videos in their Melodies series, and are now rolling out lessons for the recorder.

DSC_0126

Finally, here’s some of the benefits I’ve seen in my children over the past year that we’ve been using Prodigies.

  • My kids can translate easily between solfege, color, number, letter names, etc.  This is something I never knew how to do despite participating in choir as a kid.
  • They are learning the names of chords and what notes are used to build them.
  • My husband can pull out his guitar and the kids can pull out their bells and play together because they’ve memorized the melodies of a handful of songs.  It’s a family jam session!
  • The kids are learning to sing on pitch in a friendly, non-embarrassing environment.
  • ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I’ve seen so far is that my kids are not intimidated by music.  Or any instrument.  Though their practice at home so far is only with the desk bells and hand-signs, they have internalized the concept that music is made up of notes–notes which they have learned to call by name.  So all they have to do when they walk up to an instrument is figure out where the notes are, and then they can play any of the songs they’ve learned!  The boys will eagerly plunk out a melody on a piano whenever one is near–with no fear whatsoever.  While at a family member’s house, they spotted a harp and asked how it worked.  With no more instruction than “The strings are notes on the scale,” my eight-year-old guessed that the red strings were Cs and began to play the Imperial March from Star Wars.  On the harp.  When he’d never touched the instrument before.   And while some instruments like violin are inherently more difficult to play, my kids have also fearlessly picked them up and guessed at what notes they hear when they scratch away at the strings.  Point being:
  • The pump has been primed (and will continue to as they acquire the ability to read music from their Prodigies lessons) to have such an intuitive understanding of music that when we do sign them up for instrument-specific lessons down the road, they will be able to focus on the mechanics because the understanding will already be there.
  • Beyond all of this, they are learning to both understand and enjoy music.  And when you understand something, it’s a lot easier to love it, and when you love it, it’s a lot easier to want to learn and understand it more.  Thus, with Prodigies, our kids are being equipped for a literal lifetime of learning and enjoying music.

I hope this review has been helpful!  Check out the Lifetime Membership at the Prodigies site, and don’t forget you can use the code KEPT to get an extra 5% off your Lifetime Membership PLUS 5% off anything in your cart–like the bells, or hard copies of workbooks or songbooks.

Learning from My Children: To Dance Like David

28 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home and Family, Living Faith

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

boys, children, dancing before the Lord, dancing for joy, dancing like David, Joy, Learning from my Children, meditations, motherhood, Music, parenting, Reflections, worship

https://i0.wp.com/www.jesuswalk.com/david/images/tissot-david-dancing-before-the-ark-640x444.jpg

“David Dancing before the Ark” by James Tissot.  The ephod might have been a simple robe like this, or it might have been a loincloth.

Last night as I was making dinner I put on a Fernando Ortega CD.

My seven-year-old began moving to the music, something reminiscent of interpretive dance and ballet, though he has had no instruction and has seriously no chance at all of picking up such graceful moves from his parents.

At the end of “All Creatures of our God and King” my son announced that he wanted to dance to that song for next year’s talent show.

My initial reaction was less than enthusiastic.  I’m a rather reserved person.  I’d be somewhat embarrassed for him if he did something like that, something so…so…contrary to our culture’s gender stereotypes.  I wouldn’t want him to be labeled or made fun of.

And then it hit me:  I was responding in my mind like Michal did to David.

Are you familiar with the story?

And David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, and David was wearing a linen ephod.  So David and all the house of Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the trumpet.

Then it happened as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.

My precious boy was dancing before the Lord, in jeans and no shirt, joyfully moving his feet and lifting his hands to heaven, rejoicing in a song of praise that he has long loved.  Not unlike David danced before the Lord to celebrate the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.

And I was thinking about what other people would think of it if they saw it.  Not unlike Michal, who despised David for his exuberant worship and criticized him with biting sarcasm.

My son wasn’t the one missing something–I was.

“I will celebrate before the Lord,” David responded.  “I will be more lightly esteemed than this!”

Oh for the freedom to express our love for the Lord, giving Him the worship that He is due without allowing the fear of man to hinder us.

Am I willing to be undignified in the views of the world?  Am I willing to come to God as a joyful child?  Without reserve?  Without concern?

Am I willing to give my children the freedom to do so?

My boy may not remember this idea by the time the talent show comes around next year, but I at least am taking his example to heart.

Has the Lord ever taught you a lesson through the simple, unreserved faith of your children?  Please share in the comments below!

Great Joy

07 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Lauren Scott in Living Faith

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Advent, Christmas, G. K. Chesterton, Great Joy, Jesus, Journaling, Joy, Music, Reflections, Rejoice

This is a journal entry from a few weeks ago that seemed appropriate given the theme of joy that characterizes the Advent and Christmas season (or the painful lack of joy some suffer more acutely at this time of year).  I hope that this will encourage and strengthen your heart as it has mine.

Creative Joy

There’s a GK Chesterton quote I have written in my home management binder that got me thinking the other day…

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

In Genesis we read that God created everything.  And He said it was good.

As humans we delight in our own creative works—how much more, then, does God?

If our greatest project to date is broken or corrupted, if our best artwork goes unappreciated, we may lose heart, but even though God’s good creation has been broken and corrupted by sin and unappreciated by His creatures, He does not lose heart.  He is being creative still in working all things together according to His will and pleasure.  Like a master chess player takes great joy and delight in taking whatever move his opponent makes and using it to his advantage.  Or how a composer uses all the instruments, notes, dynamics, and dissonance to make a beautiful piece of music.  Contrary to how I might imagine Him at times, God has great joy!  He isn’t some brooding but somehow benevolent grandpa in the sky.  He is a divine, cosmic orchestrator, enjoying and delighting in His own work!

Contagious Joy

Psalm 16 ends with a rather exuberant declaration:

In Your presence is fullness of joy;

In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

At one time in my life I read this verse and thought that the joy to be found in God’s presence was in the heart of the creature delighting in God, but my view was strained because while I had imagined that those who are in God’s presence must somehow be moved to great joy, I still imagined God Himself as somehow still quite austere, even stoic and grave.  But that is not how the scriptures paint Him.  He is holy and righteous.  But He is also love and peace and delight.

If the believer’s love to God is made possible because He first loved us (1 John 4:19), and because He Himself IS love (v. 16), then it seems quite plausible that our joy and delight in Him stems from His own joy and delight in Himself and in His works.

If joy and laughter are contagious, as I am told, then our joy in the presence of God need not be somehow mustered up within us—we need only to see Him as He is, and then we will be like Him (1 John 3:1-3).

As for this side of eternity, where we do not currently see the Lord face to face, we have this promise from Jesus in John 17:  “these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.”  He has given us His word for our joy in this life—not merely as a tool so that we can conjure up our own joy, but so that we would have His joy made full in us.

All of these meditations brought this hymn to mind.  I particularly like the arrangement found here.

Thou lovely Source of true delight,
Whom I unseen adore;
Unveil Thy beauties to my sight,
That I may love Thee more.

Thy glory o’er creation shines;
But in Thy sacred Word,
I read in fairer, brighter lines,
My bleeding, dying Lord.

’Tis here, whene’er my comforts droop,
And sins and sorrows rise,
Thy love with cheerful beams of hope,
My fainting heart supplies.

Jesus, my Lord, my Life, my Light,
O come with blissful ray;
Break radiant through the shades of night,
And chase my fears away.

Then shall my soul with rapture trace
The wonders of Thy love;
But the full glories of Thy face
Are only known above.

Continual Joy

God is not merely unmoved or unsurprised when things on earth seem chaotic, upended, or just plain bad.  Our blessed God is joyfully working out His plans through it all.  He is delighting in His children, His creation; and He rejoices when a wayward one comes home to Him through faith and repentance (Luke 15:7).  Though God hates and grieves our sin, and though He sympathizes with our weaknesses and even weeps with those who are broken, no tragedy on earth will steal away His joy—nor, by extension, our joy if it is rooted in Him.

As you hold fast to your faith in Christ, through this season and the years to come, may you serve Him with gladness, awaiting with expectation the day when you hear, “Well done…enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21)

Rejoice!  And be glad!

These are my own meditations and not meant as a thorough treatment of this subject.  If you want a much better biblical analysis of this topic (seriously, so much better), check out this article at Bible.org:  The Joy of God.  I found this article as I was getting ready to post my own and loved it! 

My Calling (and the Problem with the World)

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Lauren Scott in Living Faith

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Downhere, Internet, Music, My Calling, parenting, purpose

Sometimes we struggle to know what our calling is in life. Lately, God has been making it abundantly clear to me, first by showing me what it’s not.

God is not calling me to be a Facebook Crusader, as tempting as it may be sometimes when that politically-charged status or glaringly-wrong article pops up in my newsfeed and everything within me at that very moment is screaming “This! This is important! This is urgent! I must respond! I must set the record straight!” It’s hard to pry my anxious fingers away from the keyboard, but I must. God isn’t calling me to be a debater. He’s called me to be His. A servant and an encourager. A wife and a mother. So it naturally follows that the people that need my service and encouragement the most are the people who live with me—not the people sharing pixels with me on my computer screen.

Many times I have finally walked away from the screen at the end of a day in which I’ve wasted so much time and mental energy on things that aren’t any of my business, only to find that I have greater anxiety and insecurity (What if they misunderstood me? Did I say that in just the right way?), guilt and shame (Oh boy, look at those dishes piled up—I forgot about those.), and utter emptiness because I’ve been investing in ideas rather than in people (or at times I’ve confused the two). Lately, this emptiness has led me to see that I want Jesus more than I want more information, and to be pleasing Him more than to be understood by others. The story of Mary and Martha comes to mind. In all of Martha’s distraction, she had missed the most important part—sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to Him, enjoying His presence. I’m thankful for the changes God is making in my heart, but still that sudden urge comes up sometimes as quickly as my newsfeed refreshes. With another post. Another article.

I love the free exchange of information. I love to share things I have found thought-provoking and interesting. And I’m not afraid of controversial subjects. But these things are not what I live for, they are not my calling, and the longer I live the more I realize that my time here is short, my opportunities to do what really matters are limited by my indulgence in the things that don’t.

At times these thoughts have led me to take a Facebook hiatus. I’m a bit of an all-or-nothing girl, so radical amputation has often been my modus operandi. But Facebook isn’t the problem. My “friends” on Facebook and their posts or the articles that come across the web aren’t the problem. My heart is.

On my most recent episode of “Someone is wrong on the internet”, I found myself at last pried away from the computer and finally unloading the dishwasher while grumbling, “There’s just so much wrong with the world!” Within a few minutes a song came to mind. It’s a good reminder that the problem I must pay the most attention to is…me.

  • View KeptandKeeping’s profile on Facebook
Lauren Scott

Lauren Scott

Christian. Wife. Mother. Homemaker. Home Educator. Blogger. Book Addict. Outdoorist.

View Full Profile →

Enter your email address to follow Life Meets Jesus and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Affiliate Disclosure

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Hands-on Math Curriculum

RightStart™ Mathematics
RightStart™ Mathematics

Check Out Prodigies Music Curriculum!

Compass Classroom

Top Posts & Pages

  • Remember and Rejoice: Thanksgiving Meditations from the Book of Deuteronomy
    Remember and Rejoice: Thanksgiving Meditations from the Book of Deuteronomy
  • Processing the Past with Grace: Deconstructing the Faith vs. Disentangling from False Teaching
    Processing the Past with Grace: Deconstructing the Faith vs. Disentangling from False Teaching

Advent April Fool's Day April Fools back to school Books Books Charlotte Mason Charlotte Mason Homeschool children Christian Homeschool Christian life Christian Women Christmas devotional education faith faithfulness Gratitude Guest Post Home and Family Home Education homeschool encouragement homeschooling Jesus Living Books love marriage meditations micro book reviews motherhood Music Nature Nature Studies Nature Study parenting poems poetry Practical Atheism Psalm 14 Reading List Reflections Relationships Sin Word became flesh Word of God

A WordPress.com Website.

  • Follow Following
    • Kept and Keeping
    • Join 147 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Kept and Keeping
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...