The Happy Farmer; A Super Duet!

Jewelia has been working very hard with her violin, and she learned a new song that her brother used to play when he first started piano lessons.  It's called "The Happy Farmer".

We think this is her best song yet!

Back to School, Violin Show and Tell!

Jewelia is back in school now and she is in 2nd grade this year! She was so excited for the first week! On Friday, her class was to have show and tell, and so Jewelia thought it would be great to bring her violin to show the class.

She played her class 2 songs. One she is still working on, so we will wait to post that one later, but here she is playing another fiddle song, this time the teacher's part.

It is called "Bile 'Em Cabbage Down", whatever in the world that means.....

More Minuets for Jewelia!

Jewelia learned how to play 2 more Minuets.

Her mom remembers this one from when she used to take violin lessons so long ago!



Here she plays a very popular Minuet by Bach:

Beginning the Minuets

It's Summertime, so Jewelia is having lots of fun in the sun!

Since there is no school, there is lots of time to practice the violin.
In July, Jewelia began learning a series of Minuet songs.

First is Minuet 1:

Jewelia's Photo Shoot

Jewelia turned 6 years old and went in to get her 6 year old pictures taken.
She took her violin for some fun pictures and the studio submitted them to the national headquarters and they selected her pictures to be used nationwide in their advertising and photo books.

So now Jewelia will be famous! If any of you go to a Target, look for Jewelia's violin pictures!

Meanwhile, Jewelia was having fun learning a new fiddle song called "Cripple Creek":

Sing the National Anthem?

One day in early June, Jewelia's mom's work asked her if Jewelia could sing the National Anthem for a flag raising ceremony they were going to have.

Jewelia had never sang the Star Spangled Banner and didn't know the words, but she thought she could figure out the tune in the few short days before the event. (Only 2 days notice!)

She wasn't able to memorize it in time, so she had the words, but Jewelia did a pretty good job for her first National Anthem performance:

1st Taste of Fiddle Music

Jewelia was six years old now and getting bigger. She graduated into a bigger size violin! Her first violin was a 1/10 violin, but now she had grown enough to play on a 1/8 violin.

It was a little bigger and harder to get used to stretching her fingers more, but this bigger violin sounded much nicer.

Her teacher introduced her to fiddle music, and Jewelia liked it a lot.

Here she is playing her very first fiddle song:

Another Church Song

It was Easter time and Jewelia was almost 6 years old. She was still practicing her violin, but she also liked to sing. They asked Jewelia and her siblings to do a special musical number in church.

Jewelia and her oldest brother, Micah, would sing, and her other brother, Caleb, would play the piano. Her little sister, Macey, tried to sing during practice time, but she was too afraid to sing up in public just yet.

Here is a video of them practicing with everyone participating:

A New Violin Teacher and 1st Recital!

While we did love Jewelia's 1st violin teacher, he was a very busy young man who was in many orchestras, musicals, and choir groups, so it wasn't very often when he could teach her. Plus, he was about to go on a mission.  We felt bad, but we looked into finding another teacher who could teach Jewelia.


Jewelia soon met her new teacher Emily. She was very nice and Jewelia liked her right away. Soon she began going to violin lessons every week! She was so excited! She said that Thursdays were her favorite day of the whole week because it was when she had violin lessons.

Jewelia was a very good student and so only after a few months, she was invited to participate in her very first violin recital!

Jewelia dressed up all pretty for her first recital.

She had lots of family that came to see her!

She was going to play 2 songs. The first would be a duet with her teacher and the second she asked her brother Caleb to accompany her on piano.

Caleb was happy to help.

Here she is in a duet with her teacher called "Lightly Row":



And here she is playing "Andantino" (with Caleb on piano):



She did great! What a super 1st recital at only 5 years old!

Learning to Play with Piano

Jewelia was learning to play a few different songs now, and she wanted to see if she could play with the piano part as well.

Together with her brother Caleb, they tried playing Twinkle Twinkle and Go Tell Aunt Rhody together violin and piano.

First is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:



As you can see, she has gotten much better!

Then, here is Go Tell Aunt Rhody:



I think Caleb was just a little bit too excited to be playing piano with Jewelia. As you can see, he is pretty happy, or else just likes extra camera attention.

They were doing pretty well, so they even tried a third song called "Allegretto":

Now that she had mastered violin with piano accompaniment, Jewelia was ready to again take her show on the road. She went to a nursing home where her Great Grandma Hemingway was staying and played for the people there while they ate their lunch.

New Performances at Christmas 2010

At Christmas time, Jewelia took her violin to the road.


She played her violin at Maceys in the lobby, and she went to visit her Great Grandma Lentz to play for her at the nursing home.

On Christmas Eve, she played her violin at Grandma and Grandpa's house while her cousin Hayley sang. They weren't too coordinated, but they were cute!

Here's video of their Jingle Bells performance:

Allegro

Jewelia was almost 5 years old, but she wanted to be able to do more so she learned how to read! Now she could read what it said in her violin books. She was excited to learn many more new songs.

By the time she was 5 years old she could play some harder songs.

Here she is playing a song called "Allegro":

Jewelia's 1st Violin Public Appearance!

Jewelia worked really hard and soon she had Twinkle Twinkle Little Star all learned! There was going to be a church talent show coming up and she wanted to play her violin! It is funny, she was so ready to play at the show that she started playing even before the people were finished adjusting the microphone and getting the camera ready for her to go. She still did great!

Jewelia's 1st Violin Song Attempt

Jewelia worked hard to be able to play her first song on the violin. She really wanted to learn how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on her violin.

Here is a video of one of her first attempts:

Jewelia's 1st Violin Teacher

Jewelia wanted to start violin lessons right away. She was only 4 years old and didn't know how to read yet, but she said she would learn really fast.

Her mommy worked with a nice young man who was very talented playing the violin. One day she asked him if he would ever want to try teaching someone else to play. They worked out a deal so that he could come over to her house every so often to teach Jewelia how to play.

Jewelia's 1st teacher name was Mr. Hooper. He was 17 years old young, but he was a great violinist.
Jewelia liked him right away.

Jewelia wanted to do well. She wanted to figure out the notes and strings. Here she is trying to bow with her eyes closed.

She looked forward to when her teacher would come to our house and teach her a new song.

It was difficult at first. Why did it sound so much better when Mr. Hooper played? Hmmm...

Jewelia's first lesson sounded a little like this: