Christmas Unit: The Nutcracker...

Our Grandma got us tickets to the ballet of the Nutcracker for Christmas!  It was so wonderful.  We talked a bit about it the few days prior for homeschool.

This blog has a lot of links to useful resources.

I used this study guide to get some background info on the ballet and on Tchaikovsky.  Did you know that he was so passionate about music that he would tap beats with his fingers on windows and once broke the glass and was seriously injured?  It also has a great etiquette guide that I quizzed the girls on.

We read some books:


This one tells the story in short, easy to get language.


This one we had already, and it's got a good use-your-imagination message.

We watched the ballet on dvd, the version I watched when I was a kid.

I must say that I like the story of the ballet we watched in person so much more than this one!  It makes so much more sense.  I wish the Richmond Ballet would put out a dvd!

We colored some nutcracker coloring pages, and went to the show!

Of course the girls got in their very fluffiest, sparkliest, most accesorized outfits.  And the theater was chock full of similarly bedecked little girls.  It was very cute.  (On a side note, Daddy and Grandpa didn't come; Daddy was sleeping because he is working nights, and Grandpa said he'd rather suck start a revolver.)  I even let Miss A wear my highest heels, the ones I'm afraid to wear because I'd break my ankle.  She walks much better in them than I do.

We had good seats, and time to look over the program.  Which is when I learned that all the dancers in the story from other lands are really drinks, which really makes so much more sense than just the random people in the Baryshnikov version...  We also went up to the front to look down into the orchestra pit.  Very cool.  

Here is Miss R, looking angelic.  She lasted pretty good through the first act.  But she was ready to go at intermission.  If they had just gone straight through I think she would have been fine the whole time.  Here is a later photo...

It was no small task to keep her still and quiet through the second act...

Miss M loved it.  And has been practicing her ballet moves since.  It's very charming to see her leaping and twirling and pirouetting, but sadly, it is genetically impossible for her to be graceful at ballet.  If she chose speed skating, swimming, archery, javelin, possibly wrestling I'm sure her grace would more easily surface.

Miss A was also enthralled.  She loved the bear that danced with the Russians, which did the dab twice evidently.  I'm still not in the know enough to know what that is exactly, but it was cool.