Our Homeschool Concert

Our co-op has a couple of events a year on a Saturday night with the main purpose being

1. To include the Dads

2. To have a social time together

It has become tradition for the first event of the year to be a family concert. We say ‘family’ concert because that is the atmosphere we want to have – not a school concert where each ‘teacher’ puts in hours of practice, and the props are incredible. We want more of an atmosphere as if we were an extended family; grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins all together just having a fun time putting on a show. Sure, families practice but our attitude is relaxed and nothing matters! After our concert, we share a BBQ meal together giving us all adults and children alike, time to catch up with each other.

We start the afternoon with a short time looking at a Character trait – we use Character First. This month we are studying Thoroughness: knowing our goal and completing it with excellence.

This year NomiMae was the MC – she did a good job; she threw in a few onliners which made the crowd chuckle but I think the thing she did the best was connect her lines to the act that we just saw. She made the afternoon flow and we all enjoyed it.

Daniel mimed a story as I narrated about finding an elephant in his barn and giving it a wash. He had chosen 3 dads to go outside while we read the story - but later brought them in one by one to 'watch' the story, and then they had to 'tell' it to the next dad - much like Chinese Whisphers - and just like Chinese Whisphers the story changed by the time the third dad came in. The third dad was Pete! In this photo Daniel is washing the underbelly of the elephant!

Nomi played "He's a pirate" from Pirates of the Caribean. Unfortunately two of the main keys didn't produce any sound which took her by surprise - she recovered very well by just playing as if they worked.

Jess played a piano piece - it was very tricky to keep timing when some of the keys weren't working! But she did well.

Nomi took one of Colin Buchanan's songs (which is sung very fast) and told it as a ballad - Luke's Desk. It is a story of all the things found in Luke's desk - things like: six pairs of scissors and half a pack of fizzers, eight-nine rubber bands, and a little pot of glue, a pick-a-path storybook about a secret mytery chook, half a devon sanga from 1982! ... a footy ball, a soccer ball, a fibrreglass canoe, a video, stereo, a bottle full of Juice-o, half a pound of sausages to make an Irish stew! And all of this is true! This is only about 1/6 of the song. She loves it!

We weren't sure what Daniel was doing but he told us he was pulling his rope. When we asked him "why" he replied "Have you ever seen someone push a rope?"

It was a great night with great performances from five families – we had skits, re-enacting a storybook, song and dance, and a drama (David and Goliath). This year our regualar co-ops are going to focus on Drama so this was a good start to the year.