Music class

So far Laurel has gone to two of her Music Together classes. The first class she seemed to like, although she did have a bit of stranger anxiety whenever the teacher approached her. But the second class, which was last Monday, she loved.

As I think I have mentioned before, Laurel likes music. Sometimes when she hears recorded music, she bobs up and down in a rudimentary dance. Sometimes when I have just finished singing to her, she echoes a few tones in response. And she enjoys our box of musical instruments, frequently shaking a maraca, tooting a whistle, or blowing into a recorder.

So Laurel liked the singing and dancing in music class, and she liked playing (and chewing on) the rhythm instruments. But her favorite thing was the teacher's acoustic guitar.

It was a very small class last week, with just two children in attendance, so there was no competition afterward when the teacher invited the kids to come up and see her guitar. I brought Laurel over, and she was immediately transfixed. She was no longer nervous about being close to the teacher -- in fact, she put her hand on the teacher's knee for balance as she edged closer. Laurel watched the teacher's fingers play a tune, and then reached out her own little hand to touch the strings. Then they strummed and plucked at the strings together for several minutes, until the teacher had to put the guitar away to get ready for the next class.

No, there's no need to sign Laurel up for music lessons quite yet, but it was exciting to see her interest. Isaac took another type of music class when he was a little younger than Laurel is now, and he never showed that spark. He liked music at home, but he didn't seem to enjoy the group environment.

Actually, Isaac's main interest in that music class was crawling over to the meeting room's exterior double doors and investigating their latching system, which involved metal rods that dropped into holes in the ground.