Saturday, January 16, 2010

Trying Out Alternatives

We love our music class, but that doesn't mean we can flirt with alternatives. I had an invite to a free preview for a series called Jingle Jangle music. It was in a neat little studio at the instructor's house.We decided to invite Chloe to join us and check it out. it was early on a Thursday morning, so we had to rush out of the house to make it, but we did have fun.The group was small, only about 7 students were in attendance at the preview, some who had been in the course before, other's new like us. The ages ranged from just younger then Holly to maybe three and a half.One of the things I liked was the drums, they were all over the class room. Some large ones, almost as tall as Holly off to the side, and some neat little ones in the center of the room.I know it was a preview class, so I am sure it wasn't as typical as every day but we did activity after activity, one of Holly's favorites was playing with the scarves.To be honest though the class had a lot of issues, pacing was one of them, perhaps because it was a preview and he did do so many different things, there was constantly pauses and transitions that didn't seem so smooth to meAnother thing that bothered me about the class is that there was not a lot of singing. There was some, but a lot of the songs were the teacher singing, or telling a story, but less interaction on our part.These are the cool drums that she really liked. Particularly when she was sitting on them and drumming, it was a really nice kinesthetic feed back for her to be able to feel the rhythm when she was drumming.She wasn't the only one who liked sitting on the drums, which was one of the things I did like, that the teacher didn't mind them sitting on the drums, and he left them out for the entire class, So rather then getting into things she shouldn't be, she spent her idle time playing with the instruments rather then causing mischief. We did this one song where everyone had finger puppets.She liked that one a lot, it was about a little bird, some of the songs were ones we knew, others were new to us. There was a lot of sounds and rhythms though rather then actually singing.The girls had a lot of fun playing with these drum sticks. I think he called them something else, like Rhythm sticks, for playing on there own by clacking them together with each other.After the class we received a pricing sheet to find out about the cost of the session. We were both quite surprised to learn that the fee was the equivalent to about 17$ a class, way too much.It also made us appreciate our regular music class that much more, it is such a deal for 5$ and our teacher is just so amazing, I miss it and am looking forward to finally going next week.Holly I have decided was made to be a drummer. She loves the drums, as you can see, she sits on them, and drums both tall, and short, large and small, with drum sticks and with her bare hands, she just likes making music.I want to pull out my practice pads for her to play with, I think she would really enjoy them, when we were in Florida she actually played a real drum set on a few different occasions.maybe I should take her to a music store, like a trip to the pet store or Ikea as an outing, at a music store she could play drums, guitar and keyboard, though I risk her breaking any of the three.After music class we had to go and gossip about it, and tell each other what we thought so we decided to head over to the public Market and get some lunch, let the girls play in the ball pit and chat. It was a fun morning play date.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Holly is a natural at drumming! And what a lucky girl to start music classes at under two years old!
I can't wait until she can join my band!
Love, Granny