Blog #16

1/28/19

This past week I had the opportunity to help my mentor at something called an Instrument Petting Zoo at Lawler Middle School. An Instrument Petting Zoo is where fifth graders can come and try all the band and orchestra instruments if they’re interested in being in a music program. It was about 5 hours, but I really enjoyed it. I helped with check-in and check-out, so I didn’t get to help kids try different instruments, but I still got to watch (and hear) from afar. It was so cool to see all these kids excited to play an instrument. It was also cool to watch the people who were screening the kids. They each had about 5 instruments to have the kids try, but the majority of the kids had never touched an instrument before. So they had to give each kid a mini lesson on how to make the correct embouchure, what air to use and more. I thought it was impressive how fast they could teach a little kid that, then rate their potential on that instrument. To be fair, I think all the screeners were band directors, but still good skills to have.