Steel Drums have Arrived!

So Santa brought our steel drums and they pretty much rock, mon!  We went with the Jumbie Jam Beginner Set.  Here are the first two videos to kick this project off and some of my impressions/thoughts of each.

Unveiling/Unwrapping

• Love the “MINE!” from our 3-yr-old Kenna right off the bat!
• :37-:44 – Love how Emily jumps right into banging on it to figure out what it does- I love the approach.  So many things should be figured out by just banging away and seeing what happens.
• 2:17 – Love how they accidentally play together, right on beat with the other
• 2:26 – Emily recognizes the 1st note of Jingle Bells and starts to play it.
• While I’m trying to figure out how to play Jingle Bells, I like all the mistakes I made along the way.  One thing we’re working with Emily on is how it’s ok to make mistakes.  Hopefully I can model that for her through this project, cause I’m sure I’ll be making plenty!

First Practices

• This is a long one and I doubt anyone will watch the whole thing.  Parts of it were being recorded semi-secretly, where they didn’t know I was taping.
• If you leave a steel drum out, your kids (and probably, anyone) will naturally want to play around with it and learn something.  I wonder how we can make school more like that.
• Yes, we’re listening to the Grinch in the background..we almost always have music going in the house of some sort or another…
• What a great contrast between our two girls and how they approach things.  Emily is our very structure rule-follower- she starts off playing the notes all in a row, A-G, with a set pattern to her playing.  Kenna is the opposite- she just starts hitting notes in random notes with both mallets.  Shows their personalities 100%, which is so interesting.
• 5:30 – Kenna gets the camera and films my worldwide debut on the steel drums.  Rock on!!!  (plus I love how she whispers the words of the song into the camera while I play…so friggin cute).