Today while I was fixing lunch, Jonas and Susannah started doing that ‘fun kid thing’ where they opened their mouths and just yelled, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH” at each other as loud as they possibly could.
No argument, no anger, no issues.
Just yelling.
And the annoying part (aside from the sheer volume) was the dissonance. Oy, my ears.
So I put down the peanut butter and walked over to the table slowly. They stopped. (I think they thought they were in trouble.)
I opened my mouth and made the lowest tone I can muster (my range doesn’t go very low) with a nice big “OM” sound. Jonas’ eyes widened. Susannah grinned. They both joined me and matched my note.
I slid up the scale, and they’d take a half-second to hear it and adjust. (By the end of an octave, Jonas ‘got it’ and anticipated the shift. That was cool.) We got as high as I could go, and I started sliding down the scale. They sang it with me.
When we stopped, they both started giggling and I told them no more crazy screaming, please. They actually managed to just sit quietly while I finished their lunch plates, and ate happily together.
Now they’re upstairs for quiet time, and for some reason I’ve got “She made a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot*” running through my head.
*We used this tongue twister in a vocal warmup when I was in high school chorus. Yay for Mr. Ellis!