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The Worth of Music for You and Your ChildMusic Advocacy is on the minds of all sectors of music teaching these days. Private music teachers know what music education contributes to our society, in particular, how it impacts your child. In the blog archives, one of my first posts was about all the life lessons we can learn from studying music. Here's an article that lists and explains the skills our children gain from music study.

Seven Important Skills Your Child Learns By Studying Music

Just an amazing list of how music makes a difference in childrens lives.

Comprehending. Learning to perceive and derive meaning from musical sounds -- for example, to identify a musical theme -- sharpens your child's ability to comprehend abstractions.
Solving Problems. The ability to understand a problem and reach an appropriate solution is one of the most important skills your child can learn. Learning the basics of musical language, such as harmony, or interpreting a work through performance teaches this skill.
Reasoning Logically. Applying particular lessons to other problems and solutions requires sound reasoning. When your child leans to analyze a musical work from a cultural, structural, or historical perspective, or to improvise within a certain musical style, both indicative and deductive reasoning grow stronger.
Making Value Judgments. Learning to comprehend, consider, and evaluate in music can help your child make informed decisions in other aspects of life. Discriminating between great and lesser works or justifying musical choices in compositions can teach your child how to make and uphold value judgments.
Using Symbols. The ability to use symbols distinguishes the human race among all forms of life. Learning to read, write, and interpret musical notation provides access to a non-verbal world of thought and strengthens the use of other symbols systems as well, such as mathematics or language.
Conceptualizing. Your child learns to classify and generalize by learning to identify different types and styles of music, to recognize how different cultures use music for personal expression, and to recognize common elements in different works.
Communicating. Perhaps the greatest gift of music is its ability to cultivate our feelings and thoughts through non-verbal means. Being able to express these feelings and thoughts, and to respond to them in others, is part of every successful program of music study and indispensable in your child's total development.

Courtesy of The Foundation for the Advancement of Education in Music

What I've been up to . . .It's been a busy summer and I've been up to my ears in plans for fall lessons along with teaching summer lessons and taking weekly lessons myself. I'm looking forward into settling into a fall schedule and back to a routine. As I'm posting, I'm sitting at Baby Lake, our annual vacation place, looking at the beautifully calm lake, and being grateful for this time of quiet reflection before diving into the fall and winter routine. I have Dr. Marianne Bryan lined up to give a masterclass in small groups to my students the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. She was very ill at this time last year and couldn't come in November. I'm so glad she came through with flying colors and is back to a rigorous teaching schedule. I've grown to love her first as my teacher, then we became friends, and colleagues in our positions for Minnesota Music Teacher's Association. Knowing her has added a special dimension to my life - I am a better person having her in my life, and am so excited for my students to be able to play for her in November. Can't Wait!
Giving 100%I've had this in my files for a long time and I just came across it today again:

Giving 100%

What Makes 100%? What does it mean to give 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give 100%. What makes up 100% in life? Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26,

Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But, A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

So one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, Attitude will get you there.