Photo by Raquel Moss on Unsplash

This term for my musical growth project I am learning how to play the ukulele.  I’ve chosen two songs to learn; You Are My Sunshine, and I’m Yours by Jason Mraz.  I had a bit of a frustrating start because the ukulele that I had borrowed to use had a string that would not tune properly and it ended up breaking a couple times.  Trying to figure out what was wrong with the ukulele, and then finding another one I could borrow for the term, slowed down my process of getting started on learning the chords and practicing the songs.  Now that I’ve got a ukulele that is tuning properly things are going fairly well as far as practicing goes..  At this point I have learned how to hold the ukulele properly, tune it using an app on my phone, and I can play You Are My Sunshine.  I found the chords for this song fairly easy to learn (C, F, and G), and am able to change between them smoothly.  Once in a while I have to pause on the switch from C to G as that is the trickiest transition but it is getting better.  The part of the song that I find most challenging is the strumming pattern which is down, down, up, up, down, up.  I can do it no problem when I am just practicing the strumming, but when I am strumming, changing chords, and singing all together I find it a bit like rubbing my head and patting my tummy and I get mixed up in the strumming.  For this song, it is taking me longer to get the final piece smooth than I thought it would.  I am really enjoying the process though and can definitely see myself using the ukulele in the classroom one day especially for the younger grades.