What Kind Of Name Is Amadeus?

Every year the 5th graders at our school do a Wax Museum. Kind of odd, I guess - but I suppose it's to help make history/biographies more fun and real. I've known this day was coming since Tanis started 5th grade, but I was surprised that they were doing it at the end of the year.

Anyway, Tanis got this note at the end of April telling the parents all about the wax museum and what not. The kids were to read some biography, do a 1 page report, make a poster and then dress as whichever person they read about.

I didn't give it a lot of thought and figured it was an easy enough project for Tanis to figure out on his own. Well about 2 weeks before it was due I asked him if he had a person in mind or if he even had a book. He said he had chosen Mozart but no he hadn't read it, but that it was at school. So I told him he needed to bring it home and read it.

-- I still don't know why in the world he chose Mozart. We are so not a classical music family over here in the least, so I'm a bit confused... --

The next week I asked him about it again, and he said he never read it and that he had to return it to the library! UGH! I talked to his teacher when I saw her a few days later and asked her how long the book had to be. She said it didn't really matter as long as they read one. So I went home and scoured the internet.

I found a few books with relatively short enough pages that Tanis wouldn't get too stressed about and then had Tanis tell me what book he had gotten at his library. He pointed out the same book I was looking at. YAY! I then ask Eric to pick it up from the book store on his way home. He agreed but in the mean time actually discovered that the library by his parents house had it. So we borrowed the book instead.

Tanis then spent the next 2 nights reading it. Wednesday night he had to make his poster and his report. I set to work on the poster as he doesn't type very fast and I knew it would take all night for him to write the report. When I finished the poster I looked at his report and saw that he pretty much just plagarized the timeline from the book. Guess he needs more help on how to write a report, eh?

So because this report was due the next day and it was getting late, I took over the report. I made him look through his information while I was doing this to get 10 facts down that he could use when someone came to him.

Because I wrote the report I found out many interesting things about Mozart. Like the fact that he was super close to his Dad and his older sister was also fairly musical, so he spent a lot of time, while he was young travelling with his Dad and sister performing. During his travels he fell in love with some lady, but she didn't feel the same way. Later on during his life he went and stayed with this girls family and then fell for her little sister, whom he then married.

At one point in his life he was trying to get a better job and his Mom had the job of travelling along with him. She got sick and died and then because he felt guilty for her death it drove a wedge in the relationship between him and his Dad. Him and his wife had 6 or 7 (Can't remember the right number at the moment) kids, but only two actually survived for a long while. Most of his kids died within months of being born, and 1 actually died within hours.

It's kind of my opinion that they way he dealt with all this loss and heartache was by throwing himself into his work. He was working so hard and was so busy that he then started to get sick and he eventually died. He died while in the middle of writing a requiem, actually. One of his pupils had to finish is for him.

Okay, sorry for that. I was just amazed at how little I really knew about this guy and then how much I learned by skimming a 70 page book. I have a little bit more respect for Mozart now. LOL!

Anyway, here's my little Mozart. I think he started to feel sick this day (He's been sick off and on for 2 weeks now and has been really sick these past 4 days. So much so I had Eric take him to Instacare on Saturday to see if he had Strep. The rapid stress test came back negative, but they apparently still took samples to send to the lab as his throat is really quite raw) so he's not so smiley in the pictures.

I went to the DI to find clothes to make due. I got lucky. The little necktie thing was a little girls jacket/top that I cut up and sewed onto a piece of another shirt...I made the dang wig out of a scarf and pantyhose. I don't sew real well, but I was able to get this to come together nicely enough.

Okay, enough yammering...Here's MOZART.......For real this time. ;)