Sally’s Music Circle

We’re currently enrolled in our 2^nd round at Sally’s music circle. I was apprehensive about bringing my son because of the cost, but the class was highly recommended by a friend. We don’t use daycare and my son doesn’t have a lot of time to learn important social skills at the park and on play dates the same way he does at music circle. Music cirlce is more than songs and instruments (but there is plenty of that too).
We took Sally up on the offer to come to a free trial class and see what it was all about. My son was about 21 months old and sat there frozen the whole time and didn’t participate at all. It was really sad as a parent to see the other children having fun and fighting over Sally’s attention while my son sat back and didn’t move. That was all it took for me to realize he needed to experience new things more regularly and learn to enjoy his peers.
It took a few classes for him to warm up to the group setting but now he is in that line of children waiting for their turn to touch new instruments, give high fives or participate some other way. He is learning to wait his turn, respect other people’s personal space, interact with his peer group — all while running around and having fun.
He listens to his teacher more so than he will listen to me (I guess I need to work on this) and asks about music circle every week. We’ll keep it up until preschool starts.

Eh, I actually don’t like it. Sally is nice, but I must objectively say that this isn’t a worthwhile class for babies or children. In most of the classes, the adults participate more than the children (because of the nature of the activities), and children aren’t offered many opportunities to either be creative or interact with each other. They do get the opportunity to get their hands on a few simple instruments (drums, shaky eggs, etc.), which is why I’m giving the class two stars rather than one.