Lisa Werner

A Resource to Help

Here is a resource our state has put together with tips on coping with staying at home: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/resilient/index.htm. There are all sorts of ideas for staying in contact with others safely, taking care of yourself, and even help for those who are working in the medical field.

We didn’t do anything exceptionally wild and crazy today to share with you all. We did enjoy the Andrew Lloyd Weber stream of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, and we watched “Onward” on the day it came out (thanks, Disney+). We spent every possible moment outside today in order to soak up the warmth before the cold comes back. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

April 4, 2020

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Isolation Kindness Challenge

Today was really good for our souls. It was a bright, sunny, warm day. And we had big plans to brighten our day and the day of others!

The girls did their schoolwork outside today. Squid took over the play set – I brought out a bean bag chair and a blanket for her (since it was still a little chilly in the morning), and she got right to work. Wormy and I worked on the deck. Working outside made schoolwork fly by!

After lunch, we went out to the driveway to create our own backdrops for some fun. Wormy wanted to be a butterfly, so she made butterfly wings for us to take turns getting pictures inside. Squid wanted to draw a cat and the Eiffel Tower so that she had ‘souvenir pictures’ from our couch travels last week. I wanted to draw the infamous “Up”-inspired balloon backdrop. It was really fun and they all turned out really well!

I’m sure you’ve seen this great idea floating around the internet

My favorite part of the day was a birthday parade we created throughout North Prairie. Three of Squid’s friends have birthdays today. A few weeks back I got to thinking about how rough it would be if my girls had birthdays during this time. I know how much Squid was looking forward to celebrating her friends’ birthdays with them (she even had a countdown on her chalkboard in her room). If that’s how excited SHE was about their birthdays….what about the girls who were having the birthday? I knew those girls would remember this year’s birthday very well, as it is so odd. However, I really wanted to create a way for them to remember this birthday for as a HAPPY memory instead of as a year their birthday wasn’t celebrated in the way they wanted.

Squid’s classroom has a Facebook page, set up by her super awesome teacher. I used this page to ask if any families would be interested in parading past the girls’ homes on their birthdays. The response was overwhelming! So many families were willing to do it! And, when this afternoon’s meet-up time came, there they all were. Some with balloons to drop off, others with amazing signs, and so many with some great yells of birthday greetings! The birthday girls definitely felt special, and it was SO great to see families from the girls’ school again! So many smiling faces! Squid’s teacher and principal were even part of our parade! How cool is that? It made me so happy that my girls go to a school with such caring families and staff. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I got a little (or more) teary-eyed during this event.

Playing “Happy Birthday” out a car window. Something to cross off the bucket list (after I add it on there first?!?)

Today was exactly what we needed. We ended with a beautiful walk through the subdivision. It’s days like today that help us get through the craziness of our current situation.

This brings me to my challenge to you all – in the next week, in what way can YOU make a difference in someone else’s life? How can you bring happiness to others? Even the smallest gesture can bring that same happiness right back to you!

April 3, 2020April 3, 2020

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Crossing Things Off the List

We are now halfway into our 3rd week of this self-contained life and I feel like we are finally getting the hang of this. Although, as I say this, I should point out that we are not without the difficulties of those ‘bad days’ where you feel like the walls are closing in.

Today wasn’t overly fancy. However, my one tip for you today is to think of those things you’ve wanted to get off your To-Do list that have been on there for weeks, months, and maybe even YEARS. For me, this meant finally teaching Wormy to tie her shoes. I remember needing to be able to do this in order to go to kindergarten (or maybe that’s what my parents told me?!?). Squid had to learn how to do it before she got through kindergarten. Now, Wormy has not heard boo about having to learn to tie her shoes. So we hadn’t done it. It’s not that we didn’t want her to learn…it just was at the bottom of the to-do list. WAY at the bottom.

It had been a struggle with Squid, so that is probably why this was not moved up on the list. We even had to learn a ‘new’ way to tie shoes that worked better for Squid.

Fast forward to today. I sat down with my hiking shoes and Wormy. She got one shoe, and I got the other. I walked her through it once, and she followed really well. I showed her some tips to tweak her skills on a 2nd try, and then she was determined to try it herself. On the 3rd try, she nailed it. I thought it was just luck. Nope. She did it again. I figured she wouldn’t remember how to do it in 10 minutes, so I made her show her daddy when he came up from his online meetings. Nope. Still got it.

FINALLY it was nice out today – sun shining, warm temps, so we went for a walk. I had Wormy tie my shoes for me. She still had it. In fact, I had tied one of my shoes before I had her tie my other one. The shoe I tied didn’t make it through the whole walk. The shoe she tied did. Maybe she should teach me?

In other news, I also think I have completed my New Years resolutions as well. Guess I need to revise them a little….

Hope you all had a great day!

April 2, 2020

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Hogwarts School is Open!

Today after the girls got done with their online class work, Hogwarts was in session! Since we are *hopefully* going to Universal Studios in Orlando this summer (fingers crossed!), my husband and I have bought the interactive Harry Potter wands on eBay to save some money. Since Squid is a HUGE Harry Potter fan, after having completed the series in 2 months, we knew she would be begging to get a wand. We also knew Wormy wasn’t going to want to miss out on this, too. However, if you wanted to do this at home, you could just grab some branches from the yard! You can easily find spells online to learn as well.

Since the wands came in the last few weeks, I decided we should put them to good use. We are going to learn a new ‘spell’ each day and practice them so that hopefully by the time we get to go to Universal and try out our skills in Hogsmeade, we will be pros. I did not order myself a wand, so I used a good ‘ole fashioned music baton!

The girls don’t know it yet, but the Hogwarts Sorting Hat is arriving tomorrow as well. We will definitely be sorting the girls into their respective houses and having fun with that tomorrow. Listen for yelling if Squid doesn’t get put into Hufflepuff….

However, for today, we learned the “Silencio” spell. I drew the wand movements on our chalkboard and had them practice over and over again. The kept calling me “Professor McGonagall”. We then grabbed out favorite stuffed animal and practiced the spell on him/her. I also told them that they could use the spell on each other, but that they needed to remember to “unsilencio” each other, as well, or else the spell will no longer work. Hahaha.

After we got done working on our spells, we did this amazing Escape Room designed by librarians in PA. The Escape Room was really fun, and both girls were able to contribute answers to the questions. You can find it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflNxNM0jzbZJjUqOcXkwhGTfii4CM_CA3kCxImbY8c3AABEA/viewform

Until tomorrow, fellow Harry Potter fans!

April 1, 2020July 4, 2021

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Sample Lessons from My Online Middle School Band Class

I am going to share the lessons I have been giving my students in hopes that you can either steal them or they inspire you to create something exciting. This is my school’s 3rd week of online learning, as we haven’t had our spring break yet, so for those of you just beginning – maybe you can learn from my issues.

I split my assignments into 2 parts – one assignment serves as their ‘lesson’ time and the other is fulfilling my ‘ensemble rehearsal’ expectations. I usually only see my students once a week for a 20 minute lesson and once a week for a 60 minute band rehearsal.

The first week I was all inspired and took an mp3 of one of the pieces we had been working pretty hard on and popped it up on Google Classroom. I asked my students to create a video recording of themselves playing along with the recording. I thought this would be a great way for them to correct any rhythmic issues they tend to have. This worked out well for some of them, but others were not quite at the level this assignment called for. This is, of course, after we got the Chromebook cameras up and running.

I also asked the students to go https://www.musictheory.net/exercises/note and play until they had 30 correct. They then were asked to take a screenshot of their final score so that I could see how many questions it took for them to get 30 correct. This also worked well, after we got that website unblocked for them on their Chromebooks (I was really batting 1000 on assignments that week).

For my second week of work, I assigned them a movement of one of our easier pieces and had them video record them playing it on their own. The students seemed to develop less frustration with this, however, their rhythms were nowhere near correct. I will have to try something different for next week.

I also asked the students to visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktKcnDfWs2c and comment back to me which music impacted the scene the most, in their opinion. The video is a silent movie scene set to 5 different musical backgrounds. The students can see how drastically music changes the mood of the movies. (We are working on a movie music unit right now, with our Spring Concert theme being “A Night at the Movies”). This was my most completed assignment to date. The students really enjoyed this.

Fast forward to this week – I am now getting clearer with my directions. In every Google assignment box, I break down my instructions into numbered tasks. I am curious to see how this works. I am hoping I will get less students marking each assignment as ‘done’ without actually doing anything.

The assignment this week is to record their piece “Silent Movie” for me with the background music. They were also supposed to go to http://www.musictechteacher.com/music_quizzes/cg_quiz_hoopshoot_rhythms.htm and play the Rhythm Basketball game, but my students’ Chromebooks don’t have Adobe Flash updated on them. I had actually emailed one of my flute students to make sure she could get to the site, so I thought I was all set on this one. I was feeling proud of myself for testing it out BEFORE I sent the assignment out. Until the Flash warning came out. The watch dog company that monitors their Chromebooks are not able to help out with this issue, and laughed at me because of how old and unsupported Flash is. Looks like my students get a free pass on this assignment until I find something else. I wish there were more FUN rhythm work things so that my students could get a bit of a brain break while still learning what I need them to work on!

March 30, 2020

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Viva Mexico!!!!

Today’s staycation involved travels to Mexico! I had a meeting until after 11:30, and then we watched the Pope’s prayer at the Vatican, so we got a late start on Mexico.

I made cheese enchiladas with chili gravy sauce for lunch. Yum, yum! I always forget how much I love cheese enchiladas. I’m sorry to say that they were so tasty and we were all so excited that I forgot to take pictures! We also had a sparkling pina colada drink that I picked up at Aldi awhile back.

I showed the girls the travel pictures from when I went to Puerto Vallarta and Cancun with my family when I was younger. They loved seeing their aunt, uncle, and I being goofy and exploring Mayan ruins. They also really loved all of the lizards.

Lizard looking proud of himself on Mayan ruins in Cancun

After that, we learned some Mexican words from this site: https://www.fluentin3months.com/common-spanish-phrases/. Our favorite part was actually the end of the page, where they talk about funny Spanish phrases. There were some very interesting phrases to learn!

Even the cat was feeling festive! Haha, just ignore the look of disgust.

Next, the girls made salsa with the America’s Test Kitchen recipe that they receive in their monthly subscription box. The box was all about experimenting with texture. We made my husband do the taste testing, and it was really neat to compare the two salsas. The recipe called for half of the salsa to be made as a chunkier, pico de gallo-type recipe, and the other half was to be processed until it was smooth. It was interesting to compare the two styles of salsa and see how different the same ingredients tasted in different textures.

I liked salsa B better, my husband liked salsa A. The girls liked anything called ‘salsa.’

The next part of our day was definitely a favorite of both Wormy and Squid. I set up a marketplace, printed off some fake money from this website: https://thisdisorganizedlife.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/reward-system-family-general-store-plus-free-printable/, and the girls got to learn the art of haggling. I had wanted to do this on Jamaica day, but found it was just as useful on Mexico day, too. I grabbed some random toys, crafts, and food that I had lying around the house, and let the girls bargain with my husband and I for the cost. It was a lot of fun, and they got pretty good at it. They each had 8 pesos to spend.

Next, I taught the girls the basic Salsa dance steps, and they had some fun dancing that for awhile. By this time, we needed a little down time, so we watched the movie “Coco.” We followed the movie with some yummy quesadillas for dinner, and then started an epic Uno battle. Our first game lasted 20 minutes, but the following game went on for an hour and fifteen minutes!!! These girls are crazy Uno players!

Well, tomorrow we have to ‘return home’, as the girls have dance class to get to! Our week of virtual travels has been a lot of fun, and now we return back to the world of online learning, as their spring break is coming to an end. Wish us all luck!

March 28, 2020July 4, 2021

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Benvenuto In Italia

For today’s staycation, we toured Italy with the girls. My husband went to Italy this summer on a music department trip, and I had traveled with my sister in the summer of 2005.

We started off by showing the girls our travel photos. Squid was not so thrilled about all of the naked dude statues in Florence. Wormy was a little too excited about the naked guy statues…..I had been to Florence/Pisa, Rome/Vatican, and Naples/Pompeii. My husband had gone to Venice, Rome/Vatican, and Florence/Pisa.

After we were done, we had lunch. I made my mom’s Spaghetti Carbonara recipe. I had also picked up some sparkling Italian sodas from Aldi the last time that they had the Italian-themed foods.

I forgot to take a picture of my beautiful plate of food, because who can delay bacon eating?!?

We watched a travel video on Rome and the Vatican, where Squid decided she was going to become a world-famous sculptor. She plans to sculpt fully-clothed people eating food in various poses. We also decided that all of the beautiful floor-to-ceiling paintings must have been the result of a different time period of self-quarantine! We’re debating whether we can cover our house in some Renaissance-style paintings….

We took a few great virtual tours. We visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa through this link: https://www.touristtube.com/Things-to-do-in-Pisa/Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa-360 and we did this FANTASTIC tour of the Vatican through this link: http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/tour-virtuali-elenco.html. We followed that up by learning some great Italian phrases through this site that pronounces them all for you, too: https://www.transparent.com/learn-italian/phrases.html#Basic%20Phrases. After that, we were going to go outside to play Bocci ball, but it was raining when we looked out the window. Instead, Wormy was inspired by the walls around the Vatican and built her own walled fortress….

That’ll keep the enemies out…or at least inspire them to nap.

The girls haven’t been sleeping the best lately (has anyone?!?!), so we all decided it is nap time now. After that, maybe we’ll check out some Bocci Ball. Tonight, we are going to do takeout from the best Italian restaurant around – Napoli’s in Burlington. We are all looking forward to that! We’ll probably snuggle in afterwards and watch “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” because that’s as Italian as I can get with kids’ movies…

I’ll leave you with this beautiful Italian sunset to inspire you to look on the bright side. My dad always takes sunset pictures on vacation, and it is definitely something I’ve inherited as an important feature of any of my vacation photo collections as well!

March 26, 2020March 28, 2020

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Going to Jamaica!!!

Today’s staycation featured a visit to Jamaica. I had to work again today, so my husband had the lead on this one. He showed the girls the pictures from our honeymoon in Ocho Rios. The girls loved all of the pictures of food. There’s never any doubt they’re related to me! Ha!

They then got to experience a Dunns River Falls climb, through this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/SaeeaA8UmMU. It totally reminded me of our own climb up the falls.

Next, my husband showed the girls this video (https://www.visitjamaica.com/listing/luminous-lagoon/457/ and https://youtu.be/sIMWQwWeeYY) of the Luminous Lagoon, which is one of my favorite stops in Jamaica. It was so neat to be out in a boat looking at this glowing water as we went around the area. This was Wormy’s favorite of the things we showed her.

My husband also taught the girls about Bob Marley, and played his music for them. We had toured Bob Marley’s house when we were on our honeymoon, and my husband has always been a big fan. He also showed them Google Earth views of the island, and they had fun ‘exploring’ the area.

Throughout the day, we dressed up in our swimsuits (had to have proper beach attire on). We were going to set up beach chairs on the living room floor and read, but since it was so nice out, the girls went out to play instead (with clothes on over their swimsuits…it wasn’t THAT warm out). We also decided to move the indoor picnic for lunch outside as well. Thank goodness for lovely weather! We also drew some friendly messages in sidewalk chalk at the bottom of our driveway to say hi to the neighbors. Wormy’s said “Love you,” and Squid’s said “Stupid coronavirus.” We also decorated in hearts to help those on the heart scavenger hunts.

I was going to teach them the art of haggling with some printed off Jamaican money images and some little toys, but since it was nice out, we’ll save that skill for another time. We went for a nice long 2-mile family walk through the neighborhood. Then we came back and watched “Cool Runnings.” By the time the movie was done, the jerk chicken I had marinated was ready to be cooked. I served it with peas and rice, and this great bottle of Welch’s non-alcoholic sparkling strawberry daiquiris. The girls were panting from the heat of the jerk sauce, but they admitted to liking it….after they had some cheesecake to cool their mouths.

I can almost smell the jerk sauce by looking at this picture!

Needless to say, both girls are very interested in going to Jamaica!

March 26, 2020

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Date Night! At Home…with kids?!?

I have been working so hard to make sure that my girls have been taken care of emotionally during this self-quarantine, but I wanted to do something for my husband. Both of my daughters love to set up a “Problem-Solving Workshop” where they ask my husband and I to bring our problems to them and they brainstorm solutions for us. I absolutely love this, and it was Squid’s original idea a few years ago. Every so often, it makes a comeback, and my husband and I scramble to come up with problems for them to solve.

This time, I decided to bring the idea of hosting a Date Night for Daddy to them. They helped me plan things out – including offering to serve us as waitresses, distract my husband while I cook, and entertain themselves while we ate. It looked great on paper (or in our case, shared Google Doc), but would it work?

After we got done watching our afternoon movie (or the down time where I get my work done), Squid tried to talk her daddy into going downstairs to play a card game with her. It was a tough sell, but we finally got there. I think my husband finally figured out we were trying to get rid of him from upstairs!

I cooked some seafood we had in the freezer (yay for cleaning out the freezer), and it was perfect since Squid is allergic. I had some mac & cheese individual cups that I made for the girls. While my husband was downstairs, I got dressed up just like I would for a normal date. Wormy got dressed up as a waitress, and went down to retrieve Squid and her dad. When my husband got upstairs, I told him what was going on and he decided he was under dressed.

I left detailed instructions for Squid, and the girls became the waitstaff. We had sparkling cider for our beverage, and then the girls served us our appetizer. While we ate that, they finished mixing up their mac & cheese and brought it downstairs. They came up and served us our main course, then went back downstairs to eat. Of course, this is the first time EVER they ate their meal quickly, but they were excited, so I didn’t complain. Squid serenaded us with live piano music while Wormy cleared the table. They then brought us our desserts and went downstairs to clean up their dishes.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. We got a little adult time, which we found out we didn’t have much to talk about since we’ve been in the same place for the last week. We actually spent most of the time talking about how good the service was at our little restaurant. When the meal was through, I made sure to tip each girl a dollar. They were definitely the most attentive waitstaff I’ve ever had. 😀

Sorry I didn’t take any pictures. I was busy with my cute date.

March 25, 2020

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Going to Paris…virtually

In Day 2 of our touring the world virtually, we went to France. I wasn’t ‘officially’ working today, but as I’m sure some of you are experiencing, working from home means less boundaries on time. I’m still working on that…

We started off our day with breakfast – a tube of crescents that I popped some mini chocolate chips inside. When my husband and I went to Paris in 2007, we ate that every day for breakfast – though it is highly unlikely that they were crescents from a tube!

Next, we toured my scrapbook from our trip so the girls could see what we did – touring Paris, Normandy, Reims, and Versailles/Monet’s gardens. Wormy got super excited to see that we went to see the real Water Lillies paintings in Paris, as they had just made their own versions of that art in her kindergarten art class. Then she was over the moon when we showed her our pictures from Monet’s actual gardens. Now she wants to go in person.

This picture is not even half as beautiful as it is in real life

We moved on to some virtual tours. We visited my favorite stop when we were in Paris – the Water Lillies exhibit in Musee de l’Orangerie: https://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit The girls loved imagining themselves sitting on the benches soaking in the whole work!

Next up, we visited the Louvre virtually through this site: https://www.youvisit.com/tour/louvremuseum Wormy kept laughing whenever the sculptures didn’t have arms! They really liked looking at the glass pyramid from the outside and then when it was the ceiling above us.

Our last virtual tour was of the Eiffel Tower. This tour wasn’t quite as good, as it is actually just a view from the sky above the Eiffel Tower. However, we did have fun zooming in on the tower itself, as you could distinctly see the two viewing platforms with people on them. We also were able to find many of Paris’s landmarks from the views, so that was pretty neat, too. I know there are a lot of different links for this, so here’s the one we found: https://www.360cities.net/image/view-from-the-eiffel-tower. If you don’t like that one, or are looking for others, just pop it into Google.

Since I had 6 years of French between high school and college, I taught the girls how to count to 20, and we had a conversation consisting of greetings, how are you, and how to ask and answer what their names are. I also taught them a cute counting rhyme (“un-deux-trois, ou est le roi?”) and we listened to some French music from my collection. My husband busted out his National Guard berets, and the girls put those on. They were adorable! I had them dress in red, white, and blue, as those are the colors of the French flag, as well.

We talked about the Euro, and I showed them pictures of the paper money and coins. We compared what they use vs what we have (they use coins for 1 and 2 euros instead of paper, their coins are different denominations, etc). I just used Wikipedia for this, as it had a great picture.

My husband and I made chicken crepes for lunch and we had to make dessert crepes as well. The girls LOVED them. Thank goodness I have an awesome crepe maker my mother-in-law got me for Christmas a long time ago. That thing is AWESOME and so easy! We also had sparkling cider, since wine and champagne are big exports for France. The girls said they felt pretty fancy. They even said “Merci” after the meal.

Yummy nutella and cherry pie filling crepes – we also made traditional dessert crepes.

After lunch, we watched “Ratatouille” since that movie takes place in France. This counted as our down time for the day! The girls got some playing in outside while my husband and I were cooking the crepes. I was going to have them play boule (bocci ball for all of you non-French types), but we ran out of time today since we took a walk instead.

March 25, 2020

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