It was Poetry For Prizes day today, but Zephyr wasn't really feeling it. That was okay, though, because
a) last time Zephyr learned his part for La Di Da Di but Lyric didn't, and
b) Zephyr got a new comic book on Sunday and has been angling to read it for a few days now.
So I let Zephyr just watch and read and focused in on teaching Lyric how to do the "hypnotize" song in La Di Da Di. He certainly offered a bunch of resistance to it, but I kept dangling how close he was to winning a prize in front of him. "All you need to do is repeat this back to me," I said, "And then you get your prize!" It always managed to bring him back in.
It didn't stop him from flopping around, however. Training your kids like this takes persistence, and being persistent means adapting to whatever it is your kids throw at you. So I let Lyric flop around and got down on the floor with him, but I still dangled the prospect of a toy in front of him if he could just repeat the song to me. I recorded this while he was lying on the floor:
Incidentally, I know I'm not the first person to ask for this, but can't we get an option on iPhones to "always shoot video in landscape format"? It would be so easy to do!
Anyway, We got it to a point where Lyric had the song pretty much down when I prompted him with the start of a few lines. From here it just becomes about repetition. Zephyr, meanwhile, just picked up the song from listening in the background. Here they are doing it together:
Progress was certainly being made, so I gave both kids an action figure for their effort. More to come soon!