Andrew likes to play music. Well, let's say he wants to play music. He always asks for instruments, like a guitar or harmonica. He has a recorder and we have a piano. Yesterday I was at the dollar store and they had harmonicas with cases for, you guessed it, a dollar. So I got him one since he's been asking for one. There's a teacher at his school who sometimes is outside in the morning toodling away on his harmonica. Andrew practiced his harmonica all afternoon yesterday. This morning he said he wanted to go outside and play his harmonica so he could "share beautiful music with the world." (his words) Truely lovely sentiments, but ok, 5 year old + dollar harmonica may not be the most beautiful music you've ever heard. He figured we could walk to school instead of ride and he could play while we walked. Sounds nice, but well, how do you tell a 5 year old that not everyone would appreciate a 5 year old playing a harmonica at 7am outside their window. And to be honest I didnt really want to listen to him play it for the 20 minutes it takes him to walk to school. Well, we compromised. We walked to school this morning in the peace and quiet and we will walk home and he can play it on the walk home this afternoon. I will be up for more noise at 3pm than I am at 7am.

Its hard to explain to a 5 year old that they just arent that good at playing music yet. I dont want to discourage him, I think it's great he wants to learn to play music. Andrew wants a guitar and I told him if he learned to read music and play the piano a little bit that we would consider it. So I started teaching him. Well he learned to read CDE on the music staff and what notes those are on the piano. He can play this little song that just goes CDE-EDC-CDEDC. Now he thinks hes Rachmaninov or something. It's cute. It'll be interesting to see how long he sticks with it. I'm not going to force him but will teach him as long as he's interested.