The Way They Should Go

A few weeks ago some women and I in my neighborhood Bible study were joking about how much more relaxed we get with each additional kid.  The first you worried about every passing germ, meticulously scheduled every meal, worked on the ABCs before she turned One, and used diaper changing time to practice counting to 10, 20 or 30.  One woman with 4 children joked, “Now we’re just glad Joe (#4) is talking and gets some food every once in a while.” 

We can all relate in some way I suppose.  But one of the nicest things I found recently is that I don’t NEED to be as… shall we say focused? - on teaching Lydia things as I was with KTRose much of the time.  She seems to pick up these things by osmosis.

With KTRose we worked and worked on counting items.  I could tell you (then, not anymore of course as each additional kids does, I think, take up space in memory) the date and time she counted 4 items, or 8 items.  Each one was a milestone to be chronicled and emailed to grandparents.  It changes with Lydia, being the second child - sorry sweetie!

The other day I was visiting with a friend and she asked Lydia how many little play horses she had.  Lydia starts, “One, two, three, four…” touching each one as she goes and finishing up with, “twelve, thirteen, fourteen!”  And she was right.  I’m thinking, “Nice.  Wonder when she picked that up?”

Of course, the answer is sitting on my lap or beside me doing a puzzle when KTRose and I are working on math.  I was reviewing phonics with KTRose sitting on my left, and Lydia was on my right piping in, echoing KTRose’s answers.  And yes, she can get a few right on her own.  She sits in the same place as we work on the Bob Books.  I’m just waiting to sit down one day and have Lydia start sounding out words.

This little phenomenon has also forced me to look at how I teach KTRose things and realize that sometimes I make it too much work.  I make it a process with rules and goals.  If Lydia can pick up counting just by being around it - I wonder how many other things BOTH girls could learn the same way.

Some of that is reflected in the decisions I’m making next year for our Homeschool plan.  Phonics and reading will have no set “curriculum.”  I can’t stomach spending $200 for something we could do just as well on our own.  I am just going to keep working with controlled phonics books, reading with KTRose.  I have “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” that I’m sure will be used as reference for introducing new concepts like blends and weird letters like ‘Y’, but besides that, lets just relax a little here!

Science also will be no set “curriculum” and that is her favorite subject!  It being her favorite is one of the best reasons in my mind not to use a curriculum at this age.  She loves it, she’ll do more than any program asks of her easily (finished Sonlight’s program by beginning of March this year) so I’ll just set up my own Life Science Outline guide.  We’ll read as much as we want in each area, we’ll study whatever animals of each type and do whatever projects and field trips the girls are excited about.  I already know for KTRose this will be all bugs, turtles, and eagles, for Lydia I predict horses, whales and lizards… varied interests these little ones.  They’ll probably learn more than any set program and like it a whole lot more.

We are using Curricula for other subjects, but even those I want to be relax about a little.  It’s amazing to me what these girls will learn if I will just read it to them, talk about it and let them act it out.  If it can somehow be learned by putting your sister in a headlock, all the better. 

Side Note:  best idea to come out of this past year was that my little drama queen needs no tests - stick a camcorder in front of her and as her what she learned and she’ll dramatically recreate circulatory system!  She *may* need a little guidance to stay on topic, but she’ll do anything to be on tape.

That’s all for now.  Just something I’ve been mulling over.  Later!

I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this with their child - but KTRose has a downright oddly good way with animals at times.  This is primarily noticeable with insects - for goodness sakes!  I HATE bugs!!  God has such a sense of humor.

This child has been able to catch flies in her bare hands for about 2 years now.  I have pictures.  The first time she did it I figured it had to be a dead one and made her go put it in the trash over her objections.  Imagine my surprise when the little bugger flew off as she tried to throw him in. 

She can catch butterflies and moths also - not so uncommonly just reaching out as one goes by and grabbing it out of the air.  That happened most recently this past Mother’s Day.  Her cousin was especially stunned on that one.  Usually there is no damage to the little critter.

She has been stung by bees a total of 3 times (I think that’s right - maybe 4 times) because she is convinced she can make friends with them.  I was stung twice on one of these episodes trying to save her from one of the bees. 

We have had many, MANY discussions about not catching bees/wasps/hornets etc.  And yet about two weeks ago she came joyfully in the house, “I caught the wasp Mommy!”  She had caught him in her butterfly net and transferred him to her butterfly habitat (currently unocupied) and zipped him in without getting stung.

Just today we were at the park and I saw her coming toward me with hand out in front of her, measured steps and not speaking.  That can only mean a bug since her preferred mode of transportation is a sprint and she wakes up in the moring mid-sentence, I swear!  She had a moth that had (according to her) landed on her hand.  You would think I would learn, but I expected it to be injured.  Nope, as I approached too close it flitted away, landing in the grass.  She gave chase, knelt down and put her hand in the grass, easily scooping him up and carried him home.  He’s the new resident of the Butterfly habitat.

I have no explanation. 

Our lives were greatly impacted Saturday with the cry from the back deck, “Mommy, there’s a turtle!  There’s a turtle in the grass!”

I ran out to see, and what do you know there was a turtle in the grass.  Between the back fence of our yard and the woods there is a neighborhood walking path and a grassy area.  Trucking from seemingly our back fence to the woods was a rather larger than I expected Box Turtle!  I told KTRose to run out (through the house, out the front door, around to the back) while I grabbed a large metal pot that was in the house when we moved in, scooped up Lydia, pulled her and my socks off and headed out behind KTRose.

We got there and she was still trucking her way to the woods.  KTRose, with of course no hesitation, picked her up by her shell and put her in the pot.  We named her Franklin, which coincidentally we have named all varied insects, stuffed animals and critters since first pointed to a picture of Benjamin Franklin and asking ’who’s that?’  I don’t know why.  Following is a pic…

We kept Ms. Franklin for the day and there was much rejoicing most of the time.  KTRose and Ms. Franklin were inseparable.  I was actually suprised at how social this critter was.  Up until one critical moment (we’ll get into that later) she never pulled her head or legs in to hide.  KTRose would pic her up, she would just look around and mover her legs.  We put her on the table on the deck and she crawled to edge after edge looking for a way down.  It was kinda cool.

However, at one point a sobbing and nearly hysterical KTRose came in from the deck and finally got out between hiccupping gasps that she had dropped Ms. Franklin off the deck!  We have a walk out basement, so our deck is a full story off the ground.

We ran down and Ms. Franklin had landed upside down on her shell with everything pulled inside.  I turned her over while sobbing KTRose asked if she was alive.  I didn’t have any idea and told her so, and she started begging to keep her if she was ok, promising to be more gentle. 

We had to have a little talk about Ms. Franklin.  For one thing, I had looked it up on the internet and there is a bit more care to a box turtle of this size than Daddy and I were quite ready to jump into.  Like building an outdoor “little” habitat.  So I told her we shouldn’t keep Ms. Franklin, that she would probably live longer and safer out in the woods by herself than with us.  After her recent leap off the deck, KTRose couldn’t argue much.

After about 10-15 minutes of no one touching her, but KTRose keeping vigil, she peeked out and eventually trucked across the backyard.  When she found a gap in the fence and went through we all let her.

Now we have a teary-eyed girl asking for a cat?  doggie?  bird?  spider?The list is endless.

After a few months of KTRose asking “will you draw me a [fill in the insect/arachnid here]” we have decided to try an art class.  I just googled “Fairfax Virginia Kids art classes” and a class held in a local “Art Center” (who knew we had one?) popped up.

There are two times KTRose now stops talking, to stalk and catch bugs (what 5 year old can catch flies and butterflies in her bare hands regularly?) and now when she is drawing them.  However we quickly progressed to “No Mommy (or Daddy) you’re not doing it right!”  She is very particular and knows how it is supposed to look and she is not getting it to look that way and neither are we.

LOL - KTR is working on addition while I type this.  I hear, “one, two, three, four, five… ugh!  C’mon mind!”

Anyway, KTRose and Lydia had their first art class last Monday, and the next one is this afternoon.  Each week they learn about a different artist, their art, then do something similar on their own.  Last week was Gyotaku Doodle - the Japanese art of Fish Printing.  They used a fish, starfish, natural sponge & seaweed to paint and then ”stamp” out their pictures.  Here’s a pic…

They really seemed to like it, though KTRose seems to go back and forth on wanting to go back.  I think the teacher had her own plan that didn’t include drawing all known insects, so we’ll see if KTRose still likes it on someone elses plan. 

Lydia is also the youngest in the class, but it’s only 4 kids, so they agreed to let her in.  I’m hoping that all goes well.  One of my favorite things is that I get a whole hour by myself!!  AND there’s a starbucks only a block away!  :-)  I *really* hope art classes work.

Besides the aforementioned activities, I think the highlight for the girls was the airplane ride.  We didn’t tell them we were going on an airplane until we pulled up in front of the airport.  Otherwise we would have heard about it 60 times an hour until we left.  They were SOOO excited.

When we got to the waiting area for departure KTR, as usual, introduced herself to everyone in the immediate vicinity and informed them we were going on an airplane to Disney until we made her leave the nice people alone.  Then she and Lydia made friends with another little girl also going to Disney and they sat at the window waiting for the airplane to arrive, jumping and rejoicing when it did.

They were both really good on the plane.  KTR was an old champ having been on one when she was almost 3 which she vaguely remembers.  Lydia doesn’t remember being not-quite-one and going on that trip, so it was more of a wide-eyed experience for her.  She also did great.  Her one moment of worry was when the plane did a fairly steep banking turn right after we took off.  She had been happily watching the cars and trees and buildings, and suddenly could only see blue sky.  She cried out, “Oh no, we’re going to go upside down!” in a loud, just hinting at panic voice.  Scott was sitting with her and held her, assuring her we wouldn’t go upside down, and she calmed down and enjoyed the rest of the flight. 

On our return flight Lyd and I sat with a very nice mom-of-5 and grandma of 4.  I was a little concerned Lyd was annoying, talking away with her.  But in the end the woman wanted to take Lyd home with her.  She even invited Lydia to sit on her lap to look out the window and they talked and talked.  It was cute.  

Maybe my personal favorite thing that happened at Disney, was our freakishly “coincidental” meeting at the bathrooms in Fantasyland.  We turned the corner to take one of the girls in, and there were our friends Brad and Rachel and their 3 kids!  They are friends of ours from church & homeschooling, and neither of us had any idea the other was going to Disney - or on vacation for that matter - for vacation that week.

Brad & Rachel are military and are moving to California.  We knew the move was coming up, but the finally activity for the move happened fast and we hadn’t had a chance to get together.  Our vacation was somewhat short notice, so many of our friends didn’t know we were going.  So they left for CA and we thought that was it - but they were doing a stop in Disney before driving across country.  :-)  We decided it was God’s way of saying, “Oh no, we’re not letting this friendship go that easily!”

Well, those are the highlights I’m remembering at the moment.  It was a really nice vacation.  The girls are getting to an age that makes it much easier to travel with them, and this trip was pretty much designed around their comfort, so it worked well.  Scott and I decided that if we were going to do anything differently, it would be to go even more off season to avoid sun and crowds even more, and to research indoor activity options also.  We were wanting to avoid the sun as much as possible by Friday and hadn’t really planned for that!

Hope everyone is doing well.  See ya out there again soon.

Meg.

Massive bonus points for the flexibility of homeschooling - we just got back from Disney this past Saturday!  :-)  We spent a week down there with the girls since Hubby is being pushed to “use or lose” all that vacation he hasn’t used in the 13+ years he’s worked for his company.  Not a bad deal!

The trip provided interesting insight into our girls.  LYD (age 3.5), our younger is more strong-willed, independant, generally unconcerned with people pleasing.  KTR (age 5.5) is very empathetic and likes to make people happy.  I tend to equate that in my head with LYD being stronger, more daring, etc.  While this is true in some senses (it’s much more unlikely that LYD will be giving into peer pressure against her own will) it’s definitely not in all ways.

KTR is our daredevil when it comes to rides.  Goofy’s barnestormer - a roller coaster LYD could ride with a parent with her, but still some good spirals down and speed - bored KTR.  She and I were in the front seat and as we pulled into unload after the ride her comment was, “I thought you said that was going to be fast?”  So sorry it didn’t meet your expectations!  She rode Space Mountain later that day.  What a riot.

 LYD freaked at the 3-D Mickey Mouse movie that while a little loud in spots, was quite harmless.  Then she loved (laughing maniacally at times) Epcot’s “Soaring” that simulated gliding over picturesque parts of the US complete with swooping down & climbing.

Neither was thrilled with fireworks, but KTR made it much farther than last time we tried when she was a year old.  She made it until right before the finale before looking at Daddy and saying she didn’t like it anymore and wanted to go.  LYD on the otherhand started screaming hysterically at the top of her lungs on the second effect (granted a huge fireball) and I tried to wrap my arms around her and talk to her and calm her down while leaving the show.  When I finally discerned what she was shrieking I was a bit disturbed to hear “THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL ME!!  THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL ME!!” coming out of her mouth. 

 Still trying to figure out where she got that!

 Well, Hubby is finally done working, so I’ll just stop here.  More later!

meg.

Reading and Math Progress Update…

Hello there!

Well, I’ve been a total slacker writing here. Sorry about that. I’ve thought about blogging often – but actually sitting down, typing something up and posting it just seems to be beyond me most days. Ah well. I shall try to do better.

I was inspired to write after attending a friends’ baby shower this weekend. The fact that it was a baby shower was awesome & we’re very excited for those friends, but isn’t what triggered blogging inspiration. What inspired was that I got to catch up with some of my Baltimore group of friends. The common question was “How is homeschooling going?” and I found myself repeating the same thing over and over. Several of the conversations were with others who have begun, or are ramping up to begin homeschooling, and those are always good idea & motivation swapping times.

Our recent progress in homeschooling has been in both reading and math – whoo-hoo! We had taken a break from our reading/phonics program because it made a leap to short, phonetically controlled books and KTRose was stressed by that leap. So I just decided to keep reviewing her phonics, introduce new ones slowly and work a little with sight words. I haven’t done as much with sight words as I will need to, mental note. However, she has turned a corner in the past 2-3 weeks and now is cruising much easier through the little Bob books. All of a sudden she could sound out all the words in a sentence, then go back and repeat the sentence. Before, by the time she sounded out the 3rd word in the sentence, she had forgotten the first word so she couldn’t hold the whole statement in her mind at once. A very tough way to try to read a book. Now, she can work through the Bob book, then flip back and do it faster the second time. Then she has the rhythm & vocabulary mastered in the book and will just skim the words and remember based on that what that page says.

The big thing is that she is feeling very successful and good about herself and reading now, so she wants to do it with me. It’s been great to see how proud she is of herself! We have the first two sets of Bob books, and I went out and got a few phonetically controlled books at Borders to work on next. Yeah, yeah… we should have just gone to the library! Are you kidding? I’m framing these books!

Another progression that has seemed to tie into this is KTRose will draw a picture, and then write on the picture “Mem” (my mom-in-law) or “Momy” if it is for one of us. She will also write other things by sounding it out as best she can like “Cat” or “bug” to label the picture. The spelling is strictly KTRose Phonetical – and sometimes quite creative (imagine butterfly), but it’s really progress for her. She even drew me a picture of tadpoles (guess what we currently have in a jar in the living room!) and got as far as “tadp” before she had to ask me how to finish. I was also surprised when she had colored a picture of me and her and then labeled it “Momy.” We haven’t covered the “Y” phonic at all, but she remembered from having me help her write “Daddy” and “Mommy” on things in the past.

The other thing I have done is ordered Horizons Kindergarten Math teacher guide and student workbooks. Horizons is one of my top contenders for First grade Math next year, and I found the Kindergarten books on-line for about $40 – so I decided to just get it and use it to see how well she can catch-up to the First grade level for next year. Then if we hate it, it’s off the list for next year. If we love it, all the better!

I was a little disappointed to see that there were several concepts we hadn’t tackled at all – money, telling time to quarter of the hour, counting by 2s, 5s & 10s to 100. This program also has the student doing two digit + two digit addition and two digit – two digit subtraction by the end of the year (no carrying or borrowing thank goodness!). This is Kindergarten!! Our state standards of learning are basically being able to count to 30, backward from 10, recognize those numbers and a little telling time! BUT then upon further research I found that this program is more advanced than most, and their K level is on par with most 1st grade level math programs. Whew!

I decided to just jump in at lesson 28 (out of 130) which seemed a comfortable starting place for her. She, so far, really likes this program!! We regularly do two lessons in a sitting and she has no problem with that.

We like that Horizons uses a “spiral” approach to concepts. This means they learn a new concept, do 6-8 problems in the new concept, then review approximately 5 past concepts (max of 6 problems of each type) and that is one day’s lesson. The next day, they again go over the new concept with the 6-8 problems, then review concepts (varying somewhat from those reviewed the previous day). Then at some point they introduce a new concept, and the previous “new” concept is one of the review sections heavily at first. As you progress with new concepts, old concepts follow a systematic cycle of review in each lesson. With this the child never does more than 6-8 problems of one type in a day (unless you do two lessons like we do sometimes) and older concepts are never dropped totally out of review rotation – so they stay fresh.

Where we jumped into the program was where the “new” concept being introduced is something she has already done, but it is still challenging to her. That is single digit addition. She and I have also already done single digit subtraction, but it is much farther on in this program, so we’ll get back to it when it comes up. Our marked progress this week was understanding + 0 addition. I hadn’t thought about how confusing that can be, but she has been wanting to add something, usually one, when the problem is adding zero. So for her 7+0=8. Every time we hit a +0 problem we would do it with pennies, popsicle sticks and fingers to try to get it to click. This past week on of our review problems was 9+0. She counted to 9, said “plus no more… equals… 9!” And grinned at me. YES!! Mommy cheered.

Anyway, that’s been our recent progress. Yay!!

Now, I am working on getting organized and planning next year. The homeschool conventions start in a couple of weeks and I wanted to know in detail, as much as possible, what I am going to be teaching so I can hit those curriculum & fun stuff fairs with purpose! Being the anal retentive person I am in planning at times, I have literally created a spreadsheet that lists each subject by 36 weeks and am trying to list weekly what will be covered. Next posting will include info on that. Hint: The Well Trained Mind has again captured my imagination…

This weeks goals:

Reading: Lessons 53-56

Music: Middle Ages - Gregorian Chant

Read Aloud: Dolphin Adventure Chapters 1 through 4

Math: Kumon Simple addition Make Number Line, #s 1-10
Pages 5 though 8 (dot to dot #s 14-17)
Pages 17 & 18 (identify missing #, up to 10)
Manipulative work to enforce counting up to 20

Bible: Start The Three Kings of United Israel page 187
Samuel annoints Saul, I Samuel 9:1-10:16
Saul is proclaimed King, I Samuel 10:17-27
Saul Rescues His People, I Samuel 11-13
Samuel Resigns as Judge of Israel, I Samuel 11:14-12:25

*************************************************

Well, here we are trying to jump back into school after a bit of a hiatus because of my continued sickness. KatieRose has actually been begging to do school for about 2 weeks, so I have tried here and there to do something, but it always ended in my coughing so much neither of us was getting anything out of it. So now I have been on meds for a while and am starting to do better and over the weekend I took time to map out what I wanted to do in the next few weeks.

Today I told KTRose over breakfast that I had school all ready and we were going to do it today and she cheered for me. It’s so nice to get that reaction.

We started with Bible as usual, and read about Samuel annointing Saul. She didn’t think it was all that exciting.

Next was Read Aloud. I have my stack of books from Sonlight and I decided to do Dolphin Adventure this week, maybe into next week since it’s 8 chapters. I’m thinking, we do school 4 days a week, so a chapter a day is fine, more if she’s interested. Today we read the whole Dolphin Adventure book. Granted it only took about 30 minutes, but that was a lot more interest than I was expecting. After each chapter I asked if she wanted to be done or for me to read more, and we read the whole thing. Now my decision is whether to read all of Dolphin Treasure tomorrow, or hold off for a few days. I only have so many of these books. KTRose was able to tell me the basic plot of the book in 2 sentences afterward, which is progress. I’m enjoying it more as she is able to retain more of a story and even somewhat hold a conversation about it.

Then we did Math. I have scratched our previous curriculum, at least for now. She just didn’t like they way they did things, so instead I got a Kumon Simple Addition book from the bookstore and thought we would work through it. It starts with Dot to Dots that get progressively longer, then they have number lines where she fills in the missing number(s). The book works up to adding 1 and 2 to numbers up to 30. I thought we would start with the dot-to-dots with 14 dots and work our way up, as well as do the fill-in missing numbers on the up-to-10 numberline this week. When she took one look and said, “Am I doing it all the way to 14 mommy?” I knew she was going to zip through it. She did all the weeks work but one sheet today. Hmmm… She wanted to do the last sheet today, but had missed the number 16 on the previous sheet, so I said we would wait until tomorrow to go on.

I also made a numberline with her today that we can hang on the wall in the dining room (where we do our schoolwork). I did up to 10 today and thought we would review this week, knowing that at some point in the teens she loses number recognition (though she can count to 20 fine) so we would start working on that next week. But I think we’re going to add 11-20 onto the numberline tomorrow and start work on those sheets now. I know she loses 16 when looking at numbers, so that will be where we really start to focus. Only after we do the Dot-to-dots up to 20 and all the fill-in the numberline sheets up to 20 will I approach the addition sheets. Of course, that could be by Friday so I gotta step up my preparation!

The plan is to use this book (as well as other Kumon or similar books for relevant topics) and manipulative activities and games until we decide on another curriculum to use for now. So far it may be Saxon, but I’m not yet ready to plop down the money, we’ll see. The Standards of Learning for Kindergarten in Virginia as far as numbers are that they know their numbers up to 30 and can count backward from 10. We’re well on track to do that this year, so I’m not feeling pressure to push with another curriculum. We also have to get time telling work. She can do this to the hour already I think, but I should review.

We started some of Ken’s wonderful Classical music exposure this week! Last night on the way home from Awana I popped in a Gregorian Chant CD (that I thankfully found once I scoured our CD collection). KatieRose listened for a minute then asked “are those men lonely?” It made me smile because I thought it actually showed some good observation. And it’s my people-relational KTRose. I asked a few questions just to see what she could hear in the music. I asked if there were men and women singing, or did she hear just men? She said just men. I asked if she heard just their voices or did she hear any instruments like piano or violin or drums? She said just their voices. I asked her if the men were singing all the same thing, or singing different sounds together? She said they were singing different things. Two out of three ain’t bad for the first listen.

Today after we finished school the reward was stickers and I put on the Chant CD for them to listen to. (I asked KTRose if she wanted it first and she was enthusiastic - lol). When I turned it on she asked, “what’s this music called again?” I started to give her a hint by saing “greg…” And she filled in “Gregoria Chant” - close! Then she turned to Lydia, “Lydia, this music is called Gregoria Chant.” Lydia said “Yeah!” nodding. Of course it is, what else would it be called? Lydia just stared at the CD player at first, so I asked if she liked it. “Yeah! I like this music!” It was very cute. [Throughout the day Lydia keeps going over and turning the music back on :-)] And it does seem to have a bit of a calming affect on them - even better!

We did 2 days worth of science and KTRose even got all of the review question right. “Why did God make the birds different colors?” the answers according to KTRose, 1. so they can hide, 2. so they can see other birdies like them, 3. so they can look for girl birds and boy birds. LOL I love hearing things on her level.

Finally we went on to phonics & reading. This is another one that I am fudging on. We are up to the point where she is using the phonics and sight words she knows to read short stories, the next being “A Pet for Pat.” But she is really intimidated and struggles with reading the stories. Individual words she is fine, short sentences she’ll do with encouragement. But give her a couple of sentences and it’s hard and she doesn’t want to do it. So today we reviewed. I went over all the phonics she knows (A,M,S,B,P,D,E,I,H,G,C,F,K,N,O,R,T) and our short list of sight words. I think I’m just going to work on those phonics in words, and sight words for a while so she knows them without really having to think about it. Hopefully it will build her confidence, too. Once that gets more automatic, I think she’ll do better with sentences and stories. Again, we are ahead of the game so I feel no pressure to push.

Well, we started at 9:00. We finished all of that school & I wrote this up while they did stickers, and it’s only 11:30am. It’s a good day.

Needed more Ken help…

Can you give me a short list of the composers you would present in what order and what era they composed during? I know SO VERY LITTLE about this, I’d do Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Handel? That’s about it. And I have no idea what era or order they go in!

Ask and you shall receive!…

They are listed here with notes about the 6 major eras. As a start, pick 1 composer per week and 1 era per month = all of music history in 6 months. Later this can be expanded.

http://www.ipl.org/div/mushist/

Composer list also here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music#Tim
eline_of_Classical_Composers.27_Music

Frankly if you have recordings by one composer and not by another, that may guide your list at the start. Use what you have. If you’re not sure what to buy, try to buy enough to fill up an era with at least 4 composers before you over do it on say, romantic.

I think you just might fall in love with music again. There is some really good stuff in there. We adults get caught in a rut sometimes.

-K