Our Musical Instrument Petting Zoo program directly supports our mission to help more children reap the educational, therapeutic and social benefits of playing music. Children living in under-resourced communities often do not have the opportunity to be introduced to musical instruments along with the joy and benefits of music making. We bring acoustic & electric guitars, ukuleles, keyboards and dozens of different types of percussion instruments for children to interact with in a safe and informal environment. This experience is often to referred to as a "please touch museum" for musical instrument – in some cases, this is a child’s first opportunity to hold an instrument. Our volunteer teaching artists demonstrate the instruments and then guide the children on how to properly hold the instrument and make their first musical sounds. These events often act as inspiration for children to begin thinking about playing a musical instrument. Academic research has shown that playing music provides a multitude of benefits for children. These benefits include higher test scores in math, science and reading that come from actual physical changes in the brain (enlarged corpus callosum, which is the neural pipeline that connects the left logical side and right creative side of our brains). Children also experience boosts in several "soft skills" including patience, perseverance and discipline. These skills along with resulting boosts to their self-confidence absolutely translates to other activities in their life. As part of our Philadelphia events, we provide information to families about resources for low and no cost instruments and music lessons. Our ultimate goal with these events, is to give kids the best of chance of success no matter what career path they choose later in life.