Pizza Parties

Childhood memories
As a child I attended an old Presbyterian Church in Tacoma. I can remember that it was next to a K-Mart (now Big K) and that a lot of my friends growing up where there. We would play games after the Sunday school classes and sing songs in the services that were often comforting to me. The evening services and hymns have stayed with me even now after 20 years. There was something that spoke of peace and rest and a certain type of "peace that passes understanding" that I still long for today.

Sunday-school teacher
Like all of the other church kids I attended Sunday school and one of my teachers was Craig, a football player at UPS and an engineer student he was most memorable to me for sporting a long and curly mullet, driving a large pick-up truck, having a cute girlfriend, and engaging with us kids in a way that motivated us.

The Challenge
As a class Craig challenged us to memorize the ten commandments, (I think I can still remember them…) and the carrot that he held out for us was a pizza party at his parents house way out on the peninsula with huge trees to climb, woods to play in games and lots of root beer! We all worked hard to memorize the Decalogue and after a few failed attempts as a group we finally had everyone on the list for the Pizza Party and the rest is history!

Impressed us
We talked about the pizza party before it happened for months and even now it is indelibly marked in my memories as one of my favorites!


Realization
This is a realization that I have had recently: children love Pizza Parties! (or any other type of festive celebration!) After every recital we always have a celebratory party with food and fun, this is a reoccurring marker of celebrating the students efforts.

Some tips for creating celebratory occasions

On a daily basis celebrate the progress verbally with honest and thoughtful praise. Remind your child of their next recital or other performance goal. Link this to the party afterwards and talk about how fun the recitals are!


Festive Markers
As a parent you can set festive markers for your child that help them to stay motivated to progress. Ideas include: planning a Pizza Party with friends after they finish a book, or other major accomplishment.

Caution
If you set a party as a “dream” for your musical child to reach for, you must follow through as planned when they reach their goal for it to be a memorable and positive experience. We don’t want children learning to associate disappointment with musical effort.

Ice cream = fun
My parents would treat our family to ice cream when a musical milestone was reached, that was fun too!

Have fun using your creativity to celebrate your child’s musical progress!

Tomorrow I will be talking about Bubbles of Awareness with children...

With Joy,
Ben