Searching for Music Class?

Today’s post is for anyone with a baby or a toddler who has winter on the brain.

Today’s post is for anyone who can see the reliability of their daily visits to the park or afternoon walks coming to a close.

Kidville Musicians and the Puppet for the Rockin' Railroad class. Photo Credit: Kidville

I don’t know about you but chez moi, this is typically the time of year I start to think about indoor activities and what I’m going to do in the event of a cold rainy wintry day. I literally cannot stand being stuck inside so I have this habit of looking to indoor classes with my kids. Last winter and spring me and the youngest Wired Momma’ette tried out the 16 week Rockin’ Railroad music class at Kidville in Bethesda.

Now, this was not my first rodeo. I’d taken my older one to several different music classes around Montgomery County when she was a baby and a toddler. Then #2 came along and I enrolled her in a few, with a brief break when she was about 18 months old because she spent the entire time as an escape artist, trying to just leave. It wasn’t fun.

So last year she was freshly turned three and the time was right for a fun music class one day a week. By then I knew she actually enjoyed music and would likely participate in a music class. While I initially had some sticker shock at the higher price of the 45-minute Kidville music class, which runs $385 for 16 weeks, once I experienced the difference of a music class with a LIVE BAND versus a CD player, I suddenly understood.

It was actually really fun. There is just something about live music, even when you’re not sitting at a restaurant in the Caribbean ocean side, enjoying a mojito with your husband. Even without all that, live music is still fun, for the kids and for the adults.

The Rockin’ Railroad class is themed around taking the kids to a different musical destination each week. The format is such that it breaks up the monotony of just sitting in mom’s lap and trying out a new musical instrument. The kids mimic the movement of a train as they travel to  learn about music from different genres and learn about the instruments that are known in that genre. Each week they are joined by puppets and they always visit puppet Grandma, who it seems knows every musical celebrity out there and has a comical story about the time she met Beyoncé and Jay-Z, for example. (Recall, from earlier this week, I am pretty sure I birthed Beyoncé).

The musicians in the band are all young and adept at working with kids, absolutely flexible when the little ones are having an off day or not exactly focused on the musical lessons at hand. In fact, each week I almost marveled over how these young musicians seemed to genuinely enjoy being there, performing for these little tykes, never once did they have an “off” day or seem disinterested in the task at hand.

Those amazing bubbles..too bad the bubble machine isn't for sale! Photo Credit: Kidville

As the kids travel through different time periods on the rockin’ railroad, learning about pitch and instruments, they are given chances to try out the instruments….drum circle has been my youngest’s favorite since the time she could coordinate banging her hands on something to now….and then they wrap the class with probably the coolest bubble machine I’ve ever seen. In fact, I tried to buy this bubble blower because it makes such great, consistent bubbles, and the kids delight in running around chasing them all, but unfortunately it’s not for sale.

Bottom line, if you are looking for a fun, interactive, indoor activity to help you and your little ones break up cold winter days, then I urge you to try out the Rockin’ Railroad class at Kidville in Bethesda. The other fun thing was then we were already parked in Bethesda and could hit the close by park, or head over to the kids book section of Barnes & Noble, with a stop at Paper Source. The class is broken up by ages, starting with 0-6 months and reaches all the way up to 5-year-olds. If music isn’t your thing, I’d encourage you to check out the plentiful class options at Kidville because the facility is lovely, very clean and broken up into several different rooms perfectly suited to appeal to the youngest around us.  Joining a class also gives you these benefits:

One complimentary pass at your home facility for our supervised state-of-the-art indoor playspace

Disclosure: Kidville gifted the class to me but my opinions here are all my own.