My Brave Little Baby!

As you already know, Henry attends music class every Monday morning. I had the choice to enroll him in an infant class (0-9 months) or a mixed age class which has kids as old as three.

I chose the mixed age class for a few reasons. 1) I wanted to get him used to noise and chaos, since he is home alone with me a lot. 2) I would rather he had older kids to emulate instead of having to look at little babies lying on the floor 3) I thought the activities would be more fun for him, even if I had to modify them.

There are about 10 other kids in his class and the closest to him in age is 16 month old. The rest are around 2 1/2. There is a lot of rough and tumble, but Henry never gets scared and holds his own pretty well. He pays attention to the teacher when she is singing, shakes his bells on his own and will sit at the big drum with the other kids, happily banging away.

Toward the end of the class, there is a jam session along to some taped music. The teacher has a big bucket of bells, maracas, tamborines, sticks, drums, and clackers etc. She makes a quick loop around the room dumping them in front of all of the kids. There is always a scramble among the bigger kids for the instruments. It is kind of like when a pinata is first broken. Once they are done choosing, I just grab a few of the remaining ones for Henry.

Today, Henry was sitting in my lap when the teacher passed. The instruments had barely hit the floor before he catapulted himself head first towards the them. He made a lunging grab for one of the maracas, practically knocking one of the bigger kids off his feet! I looked over, saw my sweet little boy laying on his stomach with his hand over his head, clutching his prize and looking quite proud of himself.

I think he is learning from the big kids a little too well!