Music Exploration 10 – handbells and recorder

Last month, what with Christmas concerts and theatre performances, we had the highest number of posts being linked up to Music Exploration with kids.  I love to get ideas from everyone else, and after reading Culture Baby’s post about The Snowman, next year I’ll definitely be checking it out, after deciding trekking to London to see it was probably a bit too much at that time of year.

This month has been quite quiet on the music front for us.  N has been doing lots of singing and music at nursery; the teacher brings in her ukulele but I’m not sure that N’s that excited about it.  I hope there’s opportunities to learn different instruments other than that when he starts school.

This month, we’ve been

Listening to

A lot of AC/DC again.  The OH N had their new CD for Christmas, and N has been enjoying rocking to it.

We have managed to listen to some funk (a bit of Prince seemed to go down well on the radio), and a new favourite of both of ours is the Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars track.  I kept trying to encourage N to dance around the room with me to it, but he looks at me like I’m mad.  However, I’m not the one who pulls off a bottom wiggle whenever he feels like it!

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The various Glee soundtracks also made an impression on N.  Whenever he moans about not liking a song on the radio in the car, it’s usually a Glee soundtrack in the cd player, so we get to sing along and ‘bop’ to it.  It’s so funny seeing him nodding his head in the back of the car while I drive singing away.  Maybe he’s going to be a bit of a musical fan when he’s older?

Watching

The BBC programme Ten Pieces.  This was on over the Christmas period and then repeated on CBBC a couple of times, and if you didn’t catch it, I definitely recommend it.  There’s a lot of information on the website too.  It’s 10 great pieces, classics and a couple of more modern pieces I don’t know at all, and is aimed at primary age children to guide them to think about how music makes them feel, what it describes and where their imagination takes them.

We’ve watched a bit of it together – Pastoral Symphony went down well, as did Holst’s Mars, but it is quite dark on the visual side, and with some of the very haunting music, N wasn’t keen and was saying he was scared.  But I love the idea – it’s like an older more grown up version of Fantasia, and hopefully we’ll watch it again when N’s a bit older and I’ve downloaded the app for him.

Playing

N has music sessions a couple of times a week at nursery and seems to enjoy them, but I don’t think they really get to experience many instruments.  So I’m all for building up a little collection of instruments at home for him to enjoy (and me as well).  As I’m still trying to persuade the OH that my piano can come from my mum’s house when it’s sold, to ours (we have the room so I’m not sure what his issue is), so I’m relying on smaller instruments.  Maybe once I see N’s interest I could set up a music corner and get my clarinet and saxophone out for him to hear and have an attempt at blowing.

For Christmas one of N’s present was a set of 8 handbells.  Not cheapo ones, but decent ones that actually sound quite nice.  They’re similar to the ones they have at his nursery school and he quite enjoyed trying those in the past, and I thought they’d be a great way to introduce the different notes.  Plus of course, great for party tunes and getting a group to have a go together.

Otherwise, N has quite enjoyed playing my mum’s old recorder.  He got very confused when it ‘broke’…the mouthpiece part comes off on that recorder, but I was trying to show him how to hold it with the left hand at the top, putting his thumb over the hole and then changing the note by putting more or less fingers on the top.  The theory’s there, he just doesn’t listen and focus on one thing at once.  I’m thinking maybe we need to have a specific music 20 or 30 minutes once a week.

So it’s over to you to share what music is going on in your children’s lives this month.  The linky’s open for 3 weeks, and any post can be linked up if it involves children exploring music in some way.