Ukulele challenge week 1

We have done the first week of our ukulele challenge, how have we got on?

My son, who is in Year 1, went back to school last week which is why I thought it was a good time to start this challenge- we had to start a new after school routine anyway with needing to make sure the children changed their clothing as soon as they got home etc. That said, it was his first week back at school after several months at home so I was expecting him to be utterly exhausted when he got back, and didn’t want to push it too much.

Last week we managed only two nights of ukulele practice as a result, and as we had my husband’s birthday and Father’s Day this weekend the poor ukulele stayed on its hook then as well. So far this week, though, we have played both nights and I plan to get him to practice again tonight.

My boy has, however, told me both nights this week that he doesn’t want to play ukulele or guitar any more, he wants to play flute (I am a flautist), or piano (we started that last year and it didn’t go too well, so we’ll try piano again once he is more used to playing), even beat boxing! Basically anything new rather than sticking to the instrument I am getting him to play every day!

Undeterred, because I think he will be pleased once he can easily pick up an instrument and play it, and I think it is good to teach him the discipline of practice, we have made some steady progress this week. He is now holding the instrument correctly so that when playing the chords he lets each string sound, whereas before he held it quite flat on his lap and trapped some of the strings, preventing them from sounding. And he has learned the chords of C, A and F.

I am combining teaching my son how to play chords on the ukulele with teaching him some basic music theory- right now I am getting him to practice very simple chord progressions and getting him to change chord on the beat while counting 1,2,3,4 (the pulse) out loud. We have played a fun game of shouting out the number 1 and saying the rest of the numbers more quietly, learning about placing emphasis on the first beat of the bar, and then shouting out the number 1 at the same time as playing the chord.

Yesterday, I got him to strum the chord on the 1st and 3rd beats, again while counting out loud, more practice at feeling the pulse in music, learning that there are stronger and weaker beats in a bar and how to keep playing in time.

As we continue this week I want to add in one more chord, G7, and get to a position where we can strum the chord on every beat of the bar. The plan is that once he has learned how to do that I can teach him how to play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

It is lucky that in our situation I can sit down with him to do this every night because that gives him the direction he needs and stops him from getting distracted when he should be practising-something that is so very easy for young children especially. As a child I started learning to play the violin around my son’s age, but never practised so gave up. Then the guitar but never practised, then gave up. Then the flute but rarely practised at first and nearly gave up, and then something changed and flute playing clicked for me.

As a child I wanted to be able to pick up an instrument and play. I’ll be honest, I was a dramatic little girl who wanted to be an actor and I wanted to be able to play something and get applause from my audience -my poor parents!- straight away but of course I lacked the discipline to put in the work. So hopefully by doing this with my son in these early years that discipline will become second nature to him far sooner than it did for me, and he will see the results of putting the time into practising.

That’s the plan anyway!