The Moose Plays Recorder

The recorder. Like the harp or flute, many people think of the recorder as an instrument with the most relaxing and soothing sounds. Or not. Especially when played by a third grader. The entire third grade at The Moose’s elementary school recently got to bring home recorders from their music class. While they are apparently playing or learning to play the instrument at school, they were able to bring them home to practice along with a song book called “Recorder Karate” with five or six songs. The idea is when you complete a song, you get a belt. Successfully play the recorder classic “Hot Cross Buns” at school, you get a yellow belt. Ideally, I suppose that everyone in third grade gets a belt. Oprah can probably explain this better.



For the first day or two after The Moose brought home the recorder, he basically just blew it creating lovely original tunes. (Again) Or not. Finally, we sat down to try to work with him on the specific notes and songs. He (and we) lost patience with each other pretty quickly. We decided to try a different route and found a how to play recorder series on YouTube. The Moose watched probably four or five videos, but he didn’t exactly get the point that you’re supposed to master the notes or sounds on the video before advancing to the next one.

A few minutes later, I noticed that he was watching a video about how to play “Old Town Road” on the recorder. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t quite master this, but apparently you can play this song on the recorder.



He had to take the recorder back to school, so we haven’t been blessed to hear the majestic sounds of The Moose playing the recorder the last few days. However, he said that he’s earned two belts, so maybe he did learn how to play some songs. In that case, thank you to his music teacher and of course Lil Nas X!