How To Tip Toe Through the Tulips: A Review of the Ukulele

There was a blank space in our Music Room, so my Sweetie decided that it was time for a Ukulele!  Let's Review this wonderful little instrument!

His music room has space for a Keyboard, a Digital set of Drums, a Guitar, a Bodhran, an Old Chord Accordian, several Tin Whistles and Recorders and our latest aquistion, the Ukulele!  For less than $100.00 he has a Ukulele, online lessons, carrying case, picks and tuner(he opted for the one in the link below).

 Important features for the Ukulele is the ability to tune the instrument.  If it doesn't have proper tuning pegs, like a guitar, you are buying a toy!  We don't want a toy, we want an instrument that will give us pleasure while we learn how to play.  This particular one is a bargain for a musical instrument!  Size is important too, this one doesn't take up much space at all.  It's easy to handle and very portable!  A bonus for him, especially when he's going out to the schools to see the kids!  Music and the Deacon, go hand in hand!  The children seem to love the music too!

                                                                  

It just so happens that today May 2nd is "Play your Ukulele" day!

Let me fill you in on a little bit about this lovely instrument.  Most people associate it with Hawaii! Hawaii's own  Israel Kamakawiwo'ole( (Oahu, 20 May 1959 - Honolulu, 26 June 1997)who played the Ukulele with style and presence. Here he is playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow and this song is still  listened to by millions of people all over the world, today!



His gentle spirit, voice, the melody and the sounds of this little instrument just seem to match perfectly.  It's hard to remain in a bad mood listening to this music.  It's partly his own sound and partly the Ukulele!  In his hands the Ukulele while a small instrument, commands a big presence, as did he!

The Ukulele actually came from Portugal, but because it has been adopted by the Hawaiian Islands, it seems to have become the instrument of these Paradise Islands. A few musicians(who aren't Hawaiin) have made it's sound their own like, Tiny Tim, with his "Tip Toe Through the Tulips".  While to my ears it wasn't a great song, it seems that it was popular enough at the time to garner lots of play time on several Radio Stations. It seems to have helped the Ukulele to become a popular musical instrument at the time too!

Ukuleles are not expensive to own!  As I have mentioned before,  good one will cost less than $100.00 and for someone who is on a budget, this is much more affordable than a good guitar.  You can learn the chords and the strumming techniques and use them on either instrument.  So while learning one, you will ultimately learn more than one instrument, without a big cash outlay at the start.  This is great for parents or grandparents who would love to see their offspring develop some musical talent.  Ukuleles are also small in size, so portability is not an issue.  Even the youngest child can handle carrying a Ukulele around without any kind of difficulty.  They would love the song Lava that features a strumming of the Ukulele with lyrics that will mean so much to every audience.  Check it out right here!


                                                   I think I Lava this song!


In writing this review I found myself looking into people who are fully into the sounds of the Ukulele and guess what?  I found several people that take the Ukulele very seriously and the sounds that come out of this instrument make me stop in my tracks to admire and enjoy the sound.  I would never have thought that this instrument was truly able to be played in such a commanding way.  If you want, you can check out this amazing and lovely lovely sound right here!  With this kind of talent and ability, who would not want to learn how to play this lovely little instrument?  I think I'll be moving into the music room now and practicing some Ukulele music!

Maybe I can figure out how to play The Mother's Day Song for Mother's day!  Just to make my mother laugh and cry at the same time!  Music is a perfect gift at anytime, but today I will use it for my Mother's Day present!  Surprise MOM!  Hope you enjoy the lyrics.....I love you!

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Crafting is for Life, Not Just the Holidays!

I love how crafts can seep into every area of life. My daughter is an autonomous learner, which means an unstructured home education that is child-led and follows subjects that she is interested in. Right now we are learning about the body, and building a skeleton. This term at forest school is all about minibeasts, and there is a new show on the CBeebies channel all about minibeasts too, so we are learning lots about insects! My daughter has taken a great interest in musical instruments recently, and also wants to learn about the vikings. And, as I mentioned last week, we do weekly crafts and activities based around a picture book of choice. All of these topics can include crafts, so not only are we getting creative and arty, we are learning lots, too!

 At the start of the week, we went on a lovely morning out in the forest for the May Bank Holiday. An author was visiting with her book, Teddy Edward's Rainbow Walk, and along with the storytelling and songs was a "rainbow walk" to find lots of different colored "nature treasures" which the children then glued onto a beautiful big rainbow painted onto a large sheet of paper (above). The collage created from the many shades of leaves, twigs, flowers and pine cones was a sight to behold!

Yesterday, we made a tambourine (left) and a kazoo. Both were simple to make and used mostly everyday materials, but the process was super fun and produced great results! Whether crafting from nature, junk or actual craft materials, there are so many DIY instruments you can make. My latest lens on how to Make your Own Tambourine shows you just how easy it can be!

Our skeleton crafts have encompassed both literacy (we recently read and had fun with the book Funnybones), art (chalk drawings, glow in the dark paint, moving paper skeletons), puzzles (printing out and piecing back together skeleton bones) and science - we're building a skeleton week by week with a cool partworks series, which comes with a magazine explaining all about how the body works, and to demonstrate how strong our bones are, despite being hollow, we did a fantastic craft where we stuck about 30 drinking straws inside cardstock and rolled them up to make a bone, before placing things on top to see how strong the construction was!

We also made cotton bud skeletons (right) and pasta skeletons, which LeanneChesser explains how to make in her Spooky Skeleton Crafts, along with toilet roll skeletons, skeleton mobiles and more!  

Minibeasts have also brought out the crafters in us - insect nature collages, making up mud minibeasts at forest school, and even creating our own ant farm out of a plastic container. I can't wait to have a go at making the super cute pom pom peg butterflies that Spelloutloud shows us how to make as part of their Butterfly Unit for Young Children.

You don't have to be a home educator to nurture your child with creativity and learning through crafts - taking time to do this one evening a week or at the weekend will create wonderful memories and teach them so much.

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