Noah and choir
I was watching an old episode of Six Feet Under and one of the brothers on there sings with the Gay Men’s Chorus. It was making me think of how much I liked choir in fifth grade and wishing Noah could have the chance to sing with a group. There aren’t any homeschooling choirs around here and the other non-school-connected groups are hyper-serious with try-outs and all that. Noah loves music but is much too shy to sing by himself and he hasn’t expressed interest in an instrument. He likes to sing with me and by himself (when he thinks no one is listening) so I figured he’d like choir. Then the next day at religious school I hear some of the parents talking about starting a choir and I said, hey, if you do that, lemme know because I’ll sign my kid up.
So he’s done choir the past few months and I was right — he loves it. In the entry below this you can see him in his “dark pants, white shirt” (too big, with cuffs falling over his hands) pretending to sing before his first public performance at the JCC’s Israeli Independence Day celebration. If I didn’t tell you all this, that picture might just look odd.
Just in case any other nervous parents out there are reading this - choir “tryouts” for a choir for young kids (7-12 or even older) may not be as intimidating as you’d expect - some choirs are particularly intense, but many of the tryouts are mostly to see if the child has a sense of pitch, and involve echoing back a melody or two and singing an easy song - the national anthem is a popular pick (since all kids know it). If the choir requires that the kids be able to read music that’s generally a sign of a more intense choir, but auditions in and of themselves shouldn’t scare anyone off.
That’s good to know! I do know that the one here is more hard-core than that and it’s also wicked expensive.