Introduction

Hello, and thank you for visiting my blog.

My name is Jhodi and I would like to introduce myself, to give you a little background about why I have decided to launch this blog.

I trained as a musician in the 1990s (my goodness, that sounds a long time ago written down like that!) and after leaving University with my music degree I spent 10 years working in a number of performing arts venues – both theatres and concert halls. I worked front of house, and so was around but not involved in music making on a daily basis. I got to see and work with audiences for concerts, opera and theatre.

Working in this area is wonderful, but does not pay much money, so I made the decision to leave the arts and retrain as a lawyer thinking that I would get to do interesting work, and be able to afford to go to the concert hall to watch the concerts myself rather than just stand outside them watching other people attend them! In 2014 I had a little boy, followed nearly 3 years later by his sister, and I did not want to return to work as a lawyer. I stayed at home with the children for their first few years, which I loved and was very lucky to be able to do, and then found a job teaching pre-school music to babies and small children. The youngest babies in my classes have been a couple of weeks old, and the classes I teach (for a national organisation) run up until children start attending school. I love this job. I love seeing how the babies react to the music and other multi-sensory activities we do in class. With the toddlers and pre-schoolers, I love seeing children’s confidence growing week by week. I love being a musician again, listening to more and more music at home, and so exposing my children to more and more music. I also practise class activities with the children (although they are far less likely to actually follow me, often preferring to do whatever they want instead of the activities I am trying to get the to do!)

At University the first time all those many years ago, I studied the psychology of music and how musical ability develops in children, and this remains a very keen interest of mine, and one I am revisiting with the books I read, the podcasts I listen to and the TedTalks I watch.

I am a firm believer that it is in playing music for and with children, that a keenness and fondness for music – both listening to it and playing it – is formed in children. I believe that this lasts well into adulthood, and I would like to use this blog to explore this further.

Thank you very much for reading this far and I look forward to writing more blog posts and hearing your views and experience of music in the early years – either your own or your children’s.