A little percussion

We took a trip to visit my father over the weekend and we looked at my son and thought, hey he's finally old enough to play with some of the musical instruments in the house.  (Now we didn't point him at the guitar or violin, we are not that crazy.)  My father pulled down some of the percussion section from his top shelf and placed it on the floor.

I handed my son a drum stick and had him sit in a semicircle of instruments that he could hit.  There was a gong, chimes, a tambourine and a bongo.  I gave him one brief demonstration of how each thing could be hit with a drum stick and let him go for it.  He had the idea right away and spent the next fifteen minutes hitting the instruments as he had been shown in a random order.  This went over better than I thought it would.  Fifteen minutes feels like an incredible amount of time for a small child to have focused on a single task without additional parental encouragement.

Of course it was only a matter of time before he felt the need to explore the items beyond the parameters of the initial demonstration.  He picked up the bongos and turned them upside down and tested out what happens when you try to put the drumstick inside.  Then the tambourine was turned over, this was a little more exciting than turning the bongos over because he flipped the tambourine back and forth a few times before investigating it while it was upside down with the drum stick.  He was clearly unimpressed when he flipped the chimes over.  And it was not physically possible for him to turn over the large wall mounted gong so he settled for simply pushing it into the wall.

After this he handed me the drumstick and wandered off.  Apparently it was time to chase my sister's cat.  (Thankfully the cat chose flight over fight when it came to dealing with an over enthusiastic toddler.)

It's weird.  After hiding from toys that make noise I feel oddly compelled to seek out more musical instruments for my son to play with.  I like to think that it's simply because these things are not electronic noise makers that once activated go on for a miniature eternity with electronic "music" that I have more patience for them.  But I think the real reason is that I have more interest in playing with musical instruments myself, than baby toys that make noise.