1. Listen to every family member's favourite song (20 min)
Some of you are already masters of this game. When their turn comes, each member picks their favourite song and you listen to it together, in the car for instance. Unlike ordinary listening, in this game you say afterwards what you liked about the song and ask the others what they think. You will quickly see what matters most to the people close to you in music.
A few ideas for good questions while listening:
- how long has this been your favourite song?
- what do you like best about it?
- which musical element moves you most - the lyrics, the melody, the accompaniment, the rhythm, the arrangement or something else?
- could we make a family version of this song together?
2. Put on a family performance (20 minutes)
Agree on a day and a time for a family performance - everyone picks their own song to sing and play and presents it to the others. While preparing the pieces you can ask the other family members to join in; the best thing about music is that it can be shared.
If you are short of songs to sing, you can widen your selection with the pieces we sang at our place in Vič last autumn.
3. Give a family member a musical greeting (10 minutes)
If one of your family members has something to celebrate in the coming days, give them a musical gift. You can perform the piece on an instrument or with your voice and deliver it live or as a recording. Because music is a gift.
4. Sing a song together with your family (5 min)
Invite your family to sing a song everybody knows. You can do it after a meal at home or in the middle of a walk in nature. It does not matter which song it is, and it does not matter if somebody gets it wrong :) What matters is knowing that music is a wonderful way of giving, and that even 3 minutes of singing together is healing.
5. Listen to the world around you and write down 5 new sounds (10 minutes)
They can come from nature, from the town centre or from your room - just name them and write them down.
6. Use the holidays to get better at one piece (5 minutes a day)
Almost all of us have a tune in mind that we could use a bit of practice on.
Take just 5 minutes a day and move your performance of that piece up one step. To help, you can listen to a masterful recording of it on the first day and set yourself the goal of sounding more and more like it by the end of the holidays.