Ukulele Challenge Week 2

This week did not start off too well, to be honest. The plan (in my head) was to practice on Wednesday night, then for my son to have the night off on Thursday as my mum was going to visit for tea – ah, the joys of the social bubble. I thought I would also allow him to have the day off from it one day over the weekend.

However, on Wednesday – a very hot day – my daughter came home from school very tired and generally upset. She fell asleep on me as soon as we got out of the bath for about 20 minutes and was then really grumpy for the rest of the evening. So we abandoned ukulele practice for the night.

We did play on Friday and Sunday, and have managed to play Monday and Tuesday this week so far. We will see if this continues this week. My son’s practice avoidance attempts changed last night and rather than telling me all the instruments he would rather play instead of ukulele, he told me last night that he hated music. Once we started playing, he seemed to really enjoy it, but I was a little worried that he was saying he hated music – the idea of these lessons and getting him to be able to play is for him to love music, and love his ability to pick up an instrument and make music! He is just 6, though, and me getting him to play was getting in the way of his playing with his lego, so I am hoping and assuming that was the reason for his statement, rather than actually hating music!

Progress made: my son can now strum chords on every beat in the bar, we are sticking with 4/4 time, or 4 beats in a bar. We have added in the chord G7 (G major with an added 7th note), and I chose to teach him G7 rather than simply G major as it is in the nursery rhyme Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Speaking of which, we started learning Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and last night he was able to play through the whole of the song by himself. I wanted to get into playing recognisable songs as soon as possible, so that hopefully he sees the benefit of learning to play rather than getting bogged down initially in just learning technique.