I’m a day late, so I’ll keep this short and sweet…

Our musical activity for today was a very brief first recorder lesson for L, my 6-year-old.  I attempted to teach her the basics of how to hold the recorder and play B, A and G. We didn’t work from written music, but simply repeated an easy rhythm pattern (set by L) and harmonised together playing B and G.

Learners of every age are eager to start playing tunes, but if you just have 5 or 10 minutes for an activity such as this, it does at least provide an opportunity to practice and experiment with how to hold the recorder and how hard to blow.

I realise this might not be a very useful guide for anyone who doesn’t have a recorder or doesn’t know the fingering, but I hope it might prompt you to pick up whatever instruments you might have at home and just work on playing a couple of notes together – even 5 minutes of music-making counts!

And learning the recorder is a subject I’ll return to in a little more detail next week, so please do come back!