The tuning fork game

Julia asked me a few days ago what our tuning fork was. I tried to explain and demonstrate by putting it up to her ear after whacking it so she could hear the pitch resonating. I told her that the tone she heard was the note A, and that I could listen to that in order to figure what note to start singing on. It's a really hard concept for a child with no knowledge of reading music or singing particular pitches to understand, but I didn't realize how little she understood my explanation until today. She came over to me with the tuning fork, saying, "Mommy, I just need to use this for a minute, okay?" I gave her the go-ahead, and she said to me excitedly, "Okay, so you hold it and put it to your ear, and I'm going to sing you a song." "Do you want me to sing you the pitch?" I asked her, wondering why I was supposed to hold the tuning fork while she sang. "No, no, you just put that up to your ear and listen to it and I'm going to sing." "Okay," I said, still not getting it, and whacked the fork, listened to the pitch, and sang it for her. "No, no, I'm going to sing!" she corrected me, as if I had been goofing around trying to start singing in her place. She then looked at me really seriously and asked, "Mama? Do I need to do A?" "I can sing you an A," I said, again singing the pitch. "No, I'm gonna sing Mommy! You just hold that up to your ear and listen!" So I put the tuning fork up to my ear and simultaneously listened to the sound of the A resonating from the fork and the sound of Julia singing "Frere Jacques." After she was done, it was my turn to sing, and her turn to listen to the tuning fork. We did this back and forth for about six songs or so, at which point she lost interest and went scampering off to play something else.

Interesting concept of what the tuning fork is used for, but then again, this is Julia, who is capable of making up a wacky, imaginative use for just about anything.