Music class

Little B experienced another “first” this week – he completed his first music class!  I’ve known about our town’s highly regarded early childhood music school since he was about five months old but we never signed up because I knew I couldn’t do it with him and Little D together.  So when I learned last fall that they were offering evening classes, I couldn’t wait to jump in.  There are all kinds of studies out there touting the benefits of music for children, even at young ages, and Hubby T and I both come from musical childhoods, so it was inevitable that we'd enroll him in a musical activity of some sort eventually.  (And just for the record, Gramma and Grampa gave him these lessons as a Christmas gift...got to give credit where credit is due!)

So every Wednesday evening since January Hubby T or me or both of us have taken Little B to his “Musical Explorers” class.  He was one of, if not the, youngest kids in the class, and many of them had been in the classes before, so we weren’t surprised that he was pretty shy and reserved during the first few classes.  He became a little less clingy of us over time but he never fully relaxed to show his charming, energetic side in class.  We knew that he was getting something out of the class, however, when he started singing the songs at home completely on his own!  We also have a CD of the songs our teacher used, and he now requests specific songs from it several days a week.  We were so excited to realize that even though his face may appear completely vacant (see below), he was absorbing everything around him like a sponge.  Such a good thing to know about our kid!

 The other big thing we learned from this class is that Little B is an introvert.  We mostly knew that already, but his behavior here definitely confirmed it.   I’m so grateful that we figured this out now, as I’m sure it will make a difference when he enters the preschool era.  Being an introvert myself, I can completely relate to his reserve during class, but I’m also so proud of him for sticking with it and taking what he saw and heard and did and making it into something fun at home.  The teacher allowed us to take pictures during the last class, so here are a couple of pictures and explanations of what we were doing.  (P.S. Taking pictures of a music class is really hard!)

At the beginning of every class, our teacher Mrs. C would sing this chorus to each child by name after letting him or her choose which motion he or she wanted to do.  Little B's favorites were pounding his fists together, rolling his fists in circles, or brushing his hands together, as he was kind of doing in this picture. "Let's brush hello to Little B, let's brush hello to Little B, let's brush hello to Little B, it's good to be here together!"

Said/sung in a four beat rhythm, with increasing pitch and volume: 

"Tap, tap, tap, tap, 

tap, tap, tap, tap, 

tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, 

tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle!"

"There's a worm at the bottom of my garden and his name is wiggly woo!"  The kids were supposed to roll around on the floor like worms for this song, Little B wasn't feeling very wiggly this night.

Hula hoops were one of his favorite activities.  They did almost everything you can do with a hula hoop except roll it around their waists.  He enjoyed playing with the hoop on his own, crawling through the class-wide circle was a little more of a challenge.

At the end of class every week each child received a stamp on their hand with a picture that related to one of the songs we'd sung that night.  Little B would proudly show us his stamp for as long as it lasted (and sometimes longer).  I thought it was very sweet that the teacher ended the class with a heart.  You can tell that she really loves what she does and loves the children she works with.  Thankfully this week was not goodbye, as we'll be back in class with her in the fall.  I'm looking forward to seeing how Little B's love and enjoyment of music continues to grow and am so grateful he had this great introduction to music!