Message to Kat, I'll email the school address. If anyone else wants it, holler. It seems irresponsible on my part to just broadcast it. You mentioned the Mozart effect. What really angers me is the school officials understand that. But they look for what they can pull off on the general public. "Well you know they can do without that long-hair stuff as long as they can balance their checkbook." (hmm, maybe we should start another thread) To actually contribute something to the above topic, another thing that helps keep the kids with it is to show the joy of playing the violin. It actually can be fun. A daughter of a friend of mine started playing violin when she was 4. Astounding. By the time she was 12 she stopped playing it. There was nothing fun about it. Just work. She is 16 now and hasn't picked it up. Another friend and I play together, she on viola and me on violin. Sometimes when kids are around they move in and ask us to play whatever they think of and we do. The Starwars Cantina song is a favourite. When my other friends daughter is around we kind of work on her. Now she is taking up guitar. For the fun of it. That's good, but I'll keep working to show her the fun of the violin.

Rex