Come blow your horn!

Everyone knows that playgrounds are tons of fun. You can run, jump, slide, swing, climb, and just monkey around. But what if one day you went to a playground with a different kind of equipment – equipment you could use to trill, toot, and bang out a beat? That's what some Boston-area kids did earlier this month at the Instrument Playground, an occasional event put on by volunteers from the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

At the Instrument Playground, music students and amateur and professional players let kids touch, handle, and play a variety of the musical instruments that make up an orchestra. This time, there were eight types of instruments ready to cause a ruckus, including drums, French horns, and violins.

The percussion – or drum – station is always a favorite, says Victoria Aschheim, a percussion student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and the New England Conservatory in Boston. A volunteer with the Instrument Playground since last year, she says that kids love to beat the drums.

First-grader Jeremiah Hainline wouldn't argue with that. Of the six instruments he tried out, the drum was tops on his list. Why? Because "it sounds good," he said.

Jeremiah hopes to take drum lessons someday. His big sister Lucy piped up to add that Jeremiah already has a drum at home. So he's on his way to achieving his dream.

Besides a tenor drum, kids could play a tambourine and a glockenspiel (pronounced GLOCK-en-speel) at the percussion station. The glockenspiel (also known as "bells") looks similar to a xylophone, but the bars are made of metal instead of wood.

At the next station, Lucy Hainline, a third-grader, showed up again. And she found her favorite instrument – the trumpet. It's hard to sound off on a trumpet because you have to pucker your lips and blow just right to make the horn toot. But Lucy was a success. She confessed that she liked trumpet most because "I got good sound out."

Although the trumpet can be tough to toot, kids as young as 3 have been able to make some pretty good noise on it, says Casey Reeve. He's a student at the New England Conservatory who has volunteered a few times at the Instrument Playground.

Mr. Reeve's bright eyes and easy laugh prove that the playground isn't just fun for kids. Grown-ups like him have a blast, too. "I love to see the smiles on [kids'] faces," he said. "That really makes me happy and makes me remember why I do this."

Second-grader Noam Watt sure had a smile on his face when he talked about the trumpet. He, too, thought the sound was terrific – but more because it was loud than because of the unique tone of the brass horn.

He also liked the trumpet because, "My dad ... played it a long time." If he had to take music lessons, though, Noam would choose to play the violin – mostly because he's been able to watch his brother, Jonah, a sixth-grader, play the instrument for the past three years.

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