The Orchestra and Lyle the Crocodile

For the second year in a row we have started off the new year with a unit study of The Orchestra.  It feels like the prefect fit after studying Tchaikovsy and Handel throughout the holiday season.  The kids love, love getting to read through The Story of the Orchestra and listen to the excerpts that go along with each reading.  This year was even more fun than last year because River was able to understand so much more and Scout remembered a great deal from reading through the book last year.  Throughout our study we also read the following library books and had 2 Fantasia move nights (1 at the Hawkins house and 1 in Cheyenne with Nana and Poppa on "the big TV screen" : )

True to our tradition, we ended our study of the Orchestra by attending the Inside the Orchestra Concert at the Wildlife Experience.  We were invited to this concert 4 years ago by a dear friend and we haven't missed it since.  Scout and River drank up ever second of the concert and loved me so close to all the instruments we'd been studying.  Ryder actually blew me away by how great he was - I think he was a little overwhelmed by the whole experience; he just sat in my lap and stared at the violins and the conductor : )

That same dear friend that invited us to the Inside the Orchestra concert years ago, also invited us to see the spring Children's Theater production at the Arvada Center for Performing Arts.  We saw a production there last year and it was fantastic.  This spring's musical was Lyle the Croccodile, based on the popular children's book series.  

We checked out a ton of the Lyle books and read them in preparation for the play.  I'm glad that we did, because the play followed the storyline pretty much exactly and it was so fun for the kids to see the book "come to life."  We are always so impressed with the productions at the Arvada Center.