Ukulele 4 Kids recently clocked up its 10,000th viewing. Viewers have visited from all over the world. Most views have come from people living in the USA. The following five countries are where most views have come from:
Other visitors have viewed from Mongolia, Estonia, Chile, Puerto Rico, China and many others.
Ukulele 4 Kids thanks you for your viewings and support and
Ukulele 4 Kids is starting a new series of posts to help you play the ukulele. The new series ‘Play a Ukulele Chord’, will show you a chord diagram, a picture of what the chord looks like being played and you can hear what the chord sounds like by listening to the sound file. All chords shown and played on a using a ukulele tuned GCEA.
You can click on the ‘Chord Diagram’ and the ‘Looks Like’ photo to make it bigger. Press the red arrow head in the ‘Sounds Like’ cell to hear a C chord played. There are two strums in the sound file. Firstly, a down-down-down-down strum. Secondly, a down-up, down-up, down-up, down-up strum. Each strum is played twice, the second time the strum is played is faster than the first.
| Chord Diagram | Looks Like | Sounds Like |
|---|---|---|
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What do you get when you purchase? If you buy the licks for one genre, you get the links to download ten high quality instructional videos each lasting about two minutes. The video tutorials are clearly explained and have the benefit of having two playing views on the same screen, now that’s a nice touch. You’ll also receive PDF Tabs of each of the licks. So Jontom meets the needs of both auditory and visual learning styles.Buy the complete package and you’ll have all fifty instructional videos and PDF Tabs for each lick.
I’ve used some of the easier licks for teaching intermediate level playing kids of eleven to thirteen years of age. I’ve found they can learn them quite quickly when prepared to stick at trying them until they’re playing them. However, if you’re a complete beginner at playing the ukulele, they might not be for you just yet, but they’re worth having for inspiration and working towards playing.
With wide access to the Internet for downloading, I believe Jontom has discovered a niche market. However, just as a note, if you’re in a country that still has data-capped Internet and limited download speed like in New Zealand, it’s worth knowing that the combination of all fifty licks is about 1.3 GB in size.
What makes the resource extremely attractive is the price and the easy access to it. At 2 Euros for each genre or 8 Euros for all you’ve have a resource that you can use at home or on the go with a video playing phone. Go ahead choose all the genres, pay the fee, download, and expand your playing repertoire. You won’t be disappointed!
Learn the three basic chords C, F and G7 and 25 songs with ‘Uke’n Play Ukulele for Kids’ by Mike Jackson. This is a super little book to help kids (of all ages) learn how to play ukulele.
The book uses a simple method of adding coloured stickers to the fretboard to allow quick identification of where to place your fingers to play a chord.
With a little assistance from an older person kids as young as five will find it a helpful resource. There is also a play-along CD that comes with the book that allows you to feel the beat and improve your technique. Continue Reading
In wishing to expand the features on the ukulele 4 kids website I’ve created a video page. To view all ukulele 4 kids videos just click on the videos tab and you’ll be taken to the videos page. There you will find all the performance videos made by ukulele 4 kids – happy viewing!
From early in 2011 I decided to form two ukulele groups at the school that I teach at. The junior group has members aged 5-8 years of age; and the senior group has members aged 9-13 years of age. A key motivator for kids is being able to watch themselves perform. Watching themselves allows kids to see where they’ve played well, and where they could improve. Another motivating factor for kids is having an audience beyond their classroom mates to perform to. As a result we have performed to our local community and hosted performance videos on Youtube to share our playing with a world wide audience.
Please take the time to have a look at the videos, and leave a positive comment. Everybody I know thrives on praise and acknowledgement, so click on the like buttons too. While you’re visiting our Youtube Channel take the time to look at the other videos. Also, look around the ukulele4kids.com website. We look forward to uploading more videos to share with you when the school year begins again in New Zealand.
I recently came across a super resource called ‘Uncle Rod’s, Ukulele Boot Camp,’ that I feel would improve the skills of all kids playing the ukulele, whatever their level of playing. The resource’s focus is for ukulele players to learn the basic skills required to allow you to use the ukulele to make music. This method does NOT require you to read music or to learn Music Theory. The resource focuses on learning chords by name & forming them accurately then moving from chord to chord smoothly while strumming the strings in time with the music.
There are two main parts to the resource.
The section on learning about chord diagrams and using the practice sheets is clear and easy to understand. The five practice sheets in the key of C, F, G, A & D are clearly laid out and easy to follow.
Uncle Rod (Rod Higuchi) has kindly given permission to ukulele 4 kids to use his wonderful resource, and host a copy for you to download and use.
In summary, the Ukulele Boot Camp is a simple, challenging idea that will definitely improve your ukulele playing no matter what your level of experience. I’ll be using it to help me teach kids to play the ukulele.
I’d like to start by saying thank you to all the visitors to ukulele4kids.com, there were several thousand. This large number of visitors is great, considering the website only went live in October. The large number of visitors is also very motivating to continue developing the site. I’ve many new ideas to add to the site in 2012 to help it keep growing, and continue to encourage kids of all ages to start or continue playing the ukulele. You may have missed some of the posts, but there are several ways you can keep up to date with the posts of ukulele4kids.com. You could look through the archives, subscribe via email on our home page, follow us through Facebook, or keep up to date via Twitter. Below are the five most viewed posts of ukulele4kids.com during 2011, with Rudolph taking out the number one spot.
Haere Mai (welcome) to 2012 from Ukulele 4 Kids from New Zealand. Find the chords & lyrics for ‘Haere Mai’ here. There are a five chords, but it is easy to play. The chords are A, C, D, D7, G.
To get an idea of how the song sounds take a look at the video in this post.
To view our other videos visit our YouTube channel ukulele 4 kids.
View our other song chords page.
I hope you enjoy playing it and have a successful 2012 for strumming your ukulele!
Recently I was looking for ukulele images and instead came across ukulele personas for Firefox Internet browsers. A Firefox persona customizes your Internet browser at the top as in the picture below.
It doesn’t affect its performance in anyway, just makes it more interesting and specific to your interest of playing the ukulele.
There are a few personas you could choose from, a selection are shown below.
The instructions to change your Firefox persona are easy to follow to . Try this link to view available Firefox Personas.
If you have the right software you can even create your own persona. I don’t, so I couldn’t tell you how to create them.
So go ahead and personalise your Internet browser. I’d be impressed and happy if someone made a funky Firefox persona for ukulele4kids.com now there is a challenge – any one up to it?
Ukulele 4 Kids 