(Late post – from Tuesday…it was stuck as a draft in my phone…)
Today, I heard back from one of the Certificate of Merit teachers that I’d contacted to follow up on Peyton. She wanted to meet tomorrow during my work, so I shot back that I wasn’t free, but gave other options. She chose today at 4:30 pm. Doable, but would be busy. I picked Peyton up from CDC, waited 30 minutes in the car while she read for Brandon, then went home after band. It was 4 pm by then. Hung out for 15 minutes, then headed out to the teacher’s house. We are one mile out, so not too bad. We arrived at the house, rang on the doorbell, and she came out to meet us. She brought us to her second piano area for the younger kids. Brandon was to read his book for school, while the teacher sat and talked to us. I’d brought the books that Peyton had been working on to show her, and then she had Peyton do a few things on the piano with her. Scales, chords, and checked her hand position. She got the books out, and Peyton was pretty quiet as usual. She did answer, but every time she did, she’d look over at me. I encouraged her to respond, but when she was asked questions, she did her best to answer. They played a clapping game, whereby the teacher did a few rhythms clapping, and Peyton was to follow. She got them all except the last, which was more syncopation, and tricky! She was telling me along the way what she was looking for – coordination, sense of rhythm and timing with the notes, ear training (she figured out the F major scale, after trying it with B natural and hearing it “wrong”, and adding back with B flat), sight reading, and finger dexterity. I was not familiar with the CM system, but the teacher mentioned mostly when kids start at older ages, they tend to be about 2 CM levels below their grade level. So for a third grader, they would be at CM level 1. But she has some kids who start young and either are in the preparatory level or CM 1. At the end of the evaluation, from what she could see, she said Peyton was upper level 1. I still don’t know what that means, but Peyton played her songs well. She gained her trust by showing her the highlights of what she did right. Peyton had her game face on, and was all business. I was telling the teacher how she gets frustrated when learning songs, but that she really wants to do well with it. She understood, and had a warm, gentle nature. But she wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is with Brandon. At the end, we were talking, while the kids were playing piano and drums, accompanying each other. Then, Brandon wanted piano time, and said he was going to go to the other one, “I’m just going to go play on the other one.” Her response, “Oh you will not.” Haha..well said. And that if the child is sick, then keep them at home, since she is a performing vocalist as well as pianist. Basically, she can’t afford to get sick from sickly kids. We talked about our schedules, and she will get back to me to start next week. She said she was looking forward to teaching Peyton. I asked Peyton how she liked her, and she said she liked her better than our teacher now! They have recital/piano parties once a month, where all the CM students get together. She has all age ranges, from little guys to high schoolers. We met one coming in for her lesson. She was from the private school in MTN, and I asked her what grade she was in. She said, “Junior”. The kids were very quiet, just checking things out. When we left, Brandon asked me, “What grade is “junior”? We had 10 minutes, not enough time to sit in front of our current piano teacher’s house, so we went home to see if Dave was there. No dice. I did drive over to Ms M’s house to deliver Brandon for his lesson. I had Peyton’s costume and dessert for GS all ready to go. We were emailed late yesterday that the meeting would be a party and that all of them were required to dress up. We dropped Brandon off, and I had her dress in the car. We headed over, and Peyton played with Sophia and Miranda while I helped the moms get ready. When her classmate Nina got there, she took off with her. Nina is a bit how Peyton was last year, clinging to her mom, but Peyton makes her feel at ease. Nina is a hugger and likes to hug Peyton. Peyton usually just stands there, but eventually, she’ll come around. She took her to the backyard while her mom was free to go back to the car. There was other food there, and the kids ate a bit, then games were started. There was a skeleton relay, with each team trying to put the skeleton’s bones together. She was on the losing team, so they got one candy choice, while the winners got two. Suddenly, my sore loser said, “Candy’s not good for you anyway. It’s not good for you!” Nice. Then, there was bobbing for apples. I was grossed out, as was another mom. Fortunately for her, her daughter was first. I was proud of Peyton to have been third. She was able to get the apple pretty quickly, grabbing it by the stem, which was allowed. But when I showed Dave, he cried foul.
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She came back to me victorious, but then started to tear up about her tooth. It’s wiggly and started hurting when she bobbed, but she wanted that apple. I calmed her down, and put my healing “finger” on her tooth, and she was good again. For successfully getting the apple, she got to keep the apple and got one more piece of candy. That’s two. She brought back a blow pop and I told her it was gum. She said, “Oh really?” then went back to choose something else. I think she chose it because it was one of the bigger pieces. So, she now had two pieces of chocolate. She wanted to eat one, then thought she wanted to see what else there was first. The final game was a cake walk. She hung in there, but was out maybe 5th or 6th. The “prize” for getting out was a cupcake. Soon the girls were wanting to get out just for the opportunity to get the cupcake. Peyton happily got her cupcake, but immediately gave me the cupcake and asked for one of the pieces of candy. I think she’s figured it out, unlike her brother. She chose the kit kat, while I took the frosting off her cupcake and ate it. I saved her a bite, since she’d made a better choice. We took a picture, then the kids went back to clean up. Everyone was to just grab something and throw it away. She did as requested, and then some. We then said our thank you and goodbyes. She said bye to the troop mom, who gave Peyton a high five. Peyton told me she didn’t really eat dinner. I told her she had, not half-joking. She said, “But I didn’t have any vegetables. I want to go home and eat some vegetables, since I didn’t get any.” Sound reasoning. And I couldn’t argue with that. I came home and made up a salad for us to split. Peyton went up and showered, as Brandon was getting out. It was a later night for sure, but well worth it for her to get in some girl time!