Suzuki Day

Noah went to a Suzuki event with Mommy and Gong Gong. From what I hear the other families there were mostly Asian of the Japanese, Korean and proper Tiger Mom variety and one white girl, (so a Tiger mom convert). Everyone took out their notebooks to copy down what the teacher said, an old white lady in a walker who had studied with Shinichi Suzuki himself.
"So What's a King?" Gong Gong said.
"3 points." said Noah.
"What's a Jack?" Gong Gong asked next
"Umm 1 point."
The other members of the crowd were staring at our family (again this is what I hear as I was not there myself.)
Finally Gong Gong wrapped up the lesson with, "and those are the points for bridge. We will continue this later."

As the Sensei in a walker came out and asked everyone to perform Twinkle twinkle together like a Kata, Noah got into position. He started to play as did everyone.

"Dedededede. dededede" to twinle twinle. But then Noah started to hop from leg to leg doing high knees. A clear sign of Tinkle Tinkle coming. Grace pulled him out to the hall and the bathroom. They returned just in time to hear everyone go "dedededed deeeeeee."

"Good." said walker sensei. "Now let's do that again."

Then each child had an individual quick lesson. The numbers on the teachers fingers were shown to the parents so that there would not be a Tiger mom riot over preference.

The number was seven.

"And what number would you like to pick?"

"Five" Noah said.

"And you?"

"Five" said the white girl.

"You can't pick five. Can you pick another number?"

"But I have to pick five because five plus five is ten and ten minus five is five so I have to pick five."

"You can't pick five. You can choose another number like one, two, three, Four-"

"I choose four."

"And you?" Sensei continued.

"Six."

"And you?"

"Six."

"You can't choose six."

Well eventually Noah got his little lesson. Apparently it was quite effective because the tweaking of finger positioning enables him to have much better pitch than he had before. Pitch? well whatever it is when you get the note closer to the actual note you are supposed to play. Video of that to follow.

"Who is coming tomorrow for our all day Suzuki event." Sensei asked.
 All the tiger moms raised their hands except Grace. In fact, I am not sure Grace would really qualify as a Tiger Mom per se. Not in the Suzuki sense.

"That was probably God awful boring." Grace said of the Sunday all day Suzuki event. I guess Grace is just half Tiger mom. Which works for us.