Singing brings joy, focus, creates camaraderie, and is essential in developing a “musical heart and mind.” Encourage parents to play the CD with children’s voices at home or in the car for vocal engagement, aural memory, ear-training, and enhanced enjoyment at lessons.
Young students need not be limited to a small set of notes. Instead, explore the range of the keyboard with patterned black-key pieces. White-key pieces with fanciful lyrics follow and present more challenging finger patterns. The pieces in Book A build one upon the other for smooth, technical progress at the keyboard.
Move to the Music Circle, move to the Writing Table, move to the piano keyboard. Consider introducing pieces through singing, with simple body motions to express the words. Young students gain a natural affinity for the song this way and take it to the piano!
Let young children first express rhythm through large muscle groups. This will gradually become refined with smaller, individual finger muscles. Large muscle activities create a whole-body experience for rhythmic expression—playing a large drum, choosing rhythm instruments, or stomping “dinosaur” quarter notes around the room. Feeling a large pulse will prime students for success with more intricate rhythms to come.
Look! Find it in the music! How many patterns? Line or space? From the first lessons, encourage students to engage with the music; marking patterns, tracing bar lines, counting the measures, circling the dynamic marks. Through a playful, “investigative” approach, spotting basics can become fun, facile, and flawless.
Pressing chocolate chips into clay “cookie dough” for firm fingertips, doing a “cat back”, and making rainbows for graceful wrist motions, are just a few examples. Technique Should be light yet purposeful, always seeking to tap into the spirit of play for the child.