Puppets and piano practice 4: little breakthroughs

While Friedel's and Thusnelda's intervention has definitely helped, piano practice has continued to be a mixed bag, and sometimes the puppet preliminaries end up taking so much time and being so much of a focus that the piano loses out. 

The piggies have to get past J before they can play the piano.

It continues to be difficult for me to stay calm and patient, and at this point J feels that even Thusnelda is sometimes "too strict." My wife has suggested that J can now start practicing on his own, and yesterday under her aegis he actually did sit down and, for a few minutes, practice with concentration. She told me that as he finished, he looked up and beamed!

And this morning there was another little breakthrough. After noodling about on the keys a little, he got a piece of paper, announced he was going to write a song, and started drawing notes. 

"What is the song about?" I asked, since I heard him mumbling words. "About a snake, a sidewinder," he replied. He had a first verse in mind already: Die kleine Schlange schlängelt sich, but was hung up on the second part. I suggested du-u-urch die Wüste. He liked that. He finished the melody, hummed it to himself with the words,

Took the song to the piano and played through it, 

Then asked the piggies come and listen. We couldn't find Friedel, so he played the song for Thusnelda.

Here's the finished composition (he changed sich schlängeln to sich winden):

Die kleine Schlange windet sich / du-u-urch die Wüste

On our shopping trip afterwards he was already working on a second song. He proposed Die kleine Schlange frisst die Maus, die schluckt sie ... and then got hung up. I proposed die schluckt sie ganz herunter, which he liked. He wrote the music when he got home.