At the beginning of this year, I enrolled the boys in the Hillsboro Community Youth Choir.

Through the years, Silas has participated in gymnastics, soccer, t-ball, taekwondo, science club, and swimming at different times, but I felt he could use some musical instruction. His school offers music as one of the “specials” during the afternoon, but I was wanting more.

Choir seemed to be a good place to start as no musical instruments needed to be purchased or practiced. It took some looking and asking of friends, but we came across the community choir in nearby Hillsboro. Their kids’ choir is offered for  children in kindergarten through 2nd grade. I asked the director if we could sign Cooper up too, and she agreed. The boys practice every Monday afternoon.

Our intro to the choir was a weekend “retreat” held at a nearby church. I was so impressed with the musical instruction mixed with play that I was happy we had signed up. The director teaches from a classical music approach, and adds in fun ways to remind the kids how to stand for proper singing. She helps them learn without them even realizing they’re learning music theory.

An added bonus is that they often practice songs I sang growing up from Wee Sing Silly Songs. The boys’ first concert was at the beginning of April. As you’ll see in the video, Cooper sang for a bit and then completely forgot why he was up on stage! Silas managed to remember to sing, but lost his enthusiasm. Hopefully it’s been a good learning experience and we’ll see some progress for next concert. It’s all part of the learning curve! So we took them out for fro-yo to celebrate their first performance.

{click picture to watch the concert video}