Yep, Still True

I was pretty sure that this was the case, but it has been confirmed to me today at school that musical instruments and I are not a good match.  I have shared here before that I am very "auditorily annoyed" and that I just don't do well with lots of any noise at all.  However, this is Five Senses week, so I decided to let the Little People play the musical instruments today. 

It wasn't a free-for-all instrument session, mind you.  We did it in our small group time, where we could work with them on starting and stopping the playing when we said so.  (If you have only eight sitting in front of you, you can easily reach over and snatch kindly take it from them when they aren't listening to you and won't stop playing it.)  But of course, even with only eight in each group and a full bin full of instruments, everyone still wanted certain instruments.  Consistently in the groups it was the cymbals.  Something about this instrument clearly just drives the Little People mad with desire. 

I was able to convince my group that everyone was going to take a turn with every instrument, and then we rotated them so this happened.  Of course, this didn't stop some of them from staring at the less-desired instruments in disgust, or simply flinging them away when those came to them.   (Jingle Bells?!  Yuck!!)

Another small group had more trouble with this concept, as one child really, really, really, really, really wanted the cymbals.  And being a child who has a hard time dealing with disappointment, she funneled her desire for cymbal possession into screaming and crying at the top of her lungs.  I finally brought her over to my group for her to calm down and (hopefully) realize that crying wasn't getting her those cymbals, but then she was too far gone to calm down, especially with all of the noise.

So we had bangs, taps, dings, crashes, and wailing:  "WAAAAHHHHH!  I WANT THE BANGY THINGS!  WAAAHHHHH!  IT'S TOO LOUUUDDDDD IN HERE!!!  THE NOISEEEEEE!  THE BANGY THINGS!  WAAHHHHH!!!"

And yes, it was loud in there.  My original plan was to practice in the small groups and then let them all play their instruments to a song, but it was way more than I could handle to thing about adding an actual song to that din. 

So we put the musical instruments back in their container.  Which is where they will stay until next year.

Or perhaps the year after that.