I'd like you to meet Jessie, a mom blogger who is taking Music Together® with us for the first time this summer with her son. Over the next 6 weeks, you will get to read her perspective on one of our typical Music Together classes in Bourne. She will be posting the same information on her own blog about our classes for the next 6 weeks, but we'd love for you to check out and subscribe to her blog for the many other useful tidbits she will be imparting on all things parenting! Click: The Skillful Parent Blog
By Jessie Ansley
My name is Jessie and I recently left my job as a special education teacher to become a stay at home mama. My first priority was to find some fun summer activities so I could spend some precious time with my son. I had been to library story times and those are very fun, but my little guy always seemed to like the singing part of it the best. So when I got the opportunity to take Meryl’s Music classes, I was thrilled. I had heard some wonderful things about Meryl’s Music, but did not know what a typical class was like or what to expect from the program as a whole.
Today was day one and I must say that although my little one had a little trouble due to naptime being close to class time, we had a wonderful time. When we arrived, we were greeted by the incredibly sweet Miss Alicia. She introduced herself, gave us our nametags and immediately made us feel very welcome. The kiddos enjoyed the wide-open space and my son loved the wall of mirrors (he loves to make faces at himself!). The two small drums in the center of the room were perfectly positioned for little toddler hands and they were a hit (literally and figuratively)!
Miss Alicia was nothing short of amazing.....Brief with instructions, very engaging for the kiddos and gave wonderful insight for newbies like myself. She let us know that the best thing we could do as parents and caregivers was to constantly be modeling the behavior we expected from the little ones. As a former teacher, this sparked my interest quickly! She knew what she was doing! She let the adults know that children might run away or be distracted, but by simply continuing to model the teacher, they would come back most of the time. She was right! I did have to go grab my curious little man once, but for his first time at music class, I don’t think that’s too bad!
The class consisted of a variety of music activities that involved singing, movement and instruments.One thing in particular that I LOVED was that during two occasions, the children were given different musical instruments to explore and play. Instead of individually handing them out, which can make children jealous or impatient, Miss Alicia simply dumped the instruments in the center of the circle and let the children choose what they wanted. Because there were way more instruments than people in the room, there was no fighting, no bickering and most importantly, no tears! In fact, there were smiles and discoveries being made right before my eyes and it was incredible to see! All of these tiny hands grabbing and trying out different instruments, moving them around to see what fascinating noise they could create and kindly exchanging instruments with neighbors so they could hear what other instruments sounded like.
When it was time to put the instruments away, I was ready for a cry-fest. But, no.....oh no. Miss Alicia was in charge and she knows better. She turned putting the instruments away into a game, which involved singing, “Bum, bum, bye-bye!” as each child returned their instrument into the basket. She made it very clear that the children were to return their instruments and for parents/caregivers not to grab them from the children. This worked seamlessly and within 30 seconds, all of the instruments were away and we were beginning our next song.
The 45-minute class went by quickly and ended with a lovely good-bye song. We received materials and brief instructions to prepare ourselves for next week.
After bath time tonight, I put on the music CD that I received in our materials. I got out a large pot and two wooden spoons and we made music for 20 minutes. It was wonderful! He was drumming away and “singing” along as best as a 15-month old little boy can. It was clear to me in that moment that the decision to do these music classes was a fantastic one. We can’t wait until next week!