Weekend highlights

Lollipop lollipop
Oh lolli lolli lolli
Lollipop lollipop.....

You probably all know the tune. This is also the opening and closing song for the Lolli-pops concerts, where we went on Sunday. It is a very engaging show in which they make the audience participate through songs, rhythms and questions, so the kids won't get bored. The one that we attended was about the orchestra. In a very simple way, they presented the different families of instruments that exist in an orchestra and explained how they all work together to create music. They performed from well known children rhymes to Mozart and finished up with a Can-Can dance. I personally think it's a fun way to introduce classical music to children. Who organizes this is The Little Orchestra Society and it has two series of concerts for children: the Lolli-Pops Concerts that are recommended for 3 to 5 year old and the Happy Concerts for Young People that are more appropriate for 6 to 12 year old. I may be new to it, but this not-for-profit organization has been around for 64 years and the Lolli-Pops Concerts have just celebrated their 25th anniversary. The season usually goes from October to April with a series of 5 concerts for the younger and 3 concerts for the Happy Concerts.

For my Brazilian readers, in São Paulo, there's a similar program for children that is absolutely fantastic (imperdível) - TUCCA - Aprendiz de Maestro. These are also educational concerts for children (and grown-ups). The concerts are presented in the beautiful Sala São Paulo (São Paulo's concert hall - see picture below) and they are really well organized and performed. The season usually starts in February and finishes in December, with a series of 10 concerts. We started going with F when he was only 2 and P went for the first time when he was around 6 months. Both my sons used to love these concerts and stayed (almost) quiet for the whole 45 minutes. However, the good thing about this kind of concerts is that since the audience is composed mostly of young children, it is not a problem if your child talks to you to ask you a question or at some points even starts crying (as a courtesy to the other spectators you just go out quietly for some minutes until he/she calms down). In addition, all the money collected from the tickets and products sold (DVDs, CDs, etc) goes to this non-for-profit organization TUCCA which takes care of children with cancer. This was by far one of our favorite activities to do with kids in São Paulo - we actually liked it so much that we tried not to miss any of the concerts, which sometimes meant having to change our plans for the weekend. Give it a try, I'm sure you won't regret it.

Sala São Paulo

 
On another note, on Saturday, as I mentioned in my previous post, F ran the Ronald McDonald Kids Charity Fun Run. It was a lot of fun and since I'm a very proud mom I couldn't not mention this here (I'm going to lower my voice now): F arrived 2nd of his group. But... Shhhh! This was a politically correct race, so there were actually no winners or losers, they all got the same blue ribbon at the end. But, like I said, I'm a very proud mom!

Oh, and have I mentioned how gorgeous the park looks these days? I couldn't help myself and I had to take tens of new pictures...

Have a happy week!