Teaching preschool piano visually is always the best course at first. Kids are very good with their fingers if you don’t demand heavy brain work at the same time. It’s difficult to say whether a four or five year old is ready to start the piano, for every five year old is different. But there are common factors that link most preschool children and their attempts at piano lessons.
Strangely enough, it is the personality of the piano teacher that has the most effect on piano lessons at this young age. The biggest skill for a piano teacher to learn is to control their expectations of the child.
A sober, serious child might stand a chance with a sober, serious piano teacher. But the average child of four or five is exuberant, impatient and easily bored. What type of piano teaching personality suits such preschool children? One must be realistic about what can be taught happily to a child of this age.
One of the primary obstacles is the natural personality of the child. Most children at this age are a little silly and scattered, bouncing from one interest to another. But a master teacher can teach children the piano without dampening their natural personalities.
The process of learning to read music will most likely be too attention-intensive for preschool kids to learn happily at first. This is especially true if the teacher uses a conventional method and is determined to push only a certain curriculum. A looser approach brings better results at this stage.
Instead of reading music, try numbering the keys instead, and let your child explore the piano in this way. Try a song on our piano below:
[piano]
In Piano by Number, children delay reading music. We start instead with the piano keyboard numbered from 1-12 (see drawing above.) They can then immediately start playing familiar tunes, and start getting their fingers and hands familiar with the postures they will later need to play and read music.
Don’t forget that, ultimately, playing the piano requires two broad categories of skill: 1) reading music (largely mental) and 2) playing the keys (largely physical and visual). In my experience, starting with reading music is a recipe for disaster in almost all children.
Children make a better start at the piano if they are given the chance to simply explore the piano in a physical manner. Piano by Number allows them this opportunity. You can introduce the elements of reading music when the child is comfortable and happy playing familiar songs at the piano. I Can Read Music is an excellent introduction to these elements, presented as a game that any child can enjoy.
You cannot really make a misstep if you delay reading music until the child is comfortable with the piano. This period is their “comfort zone,” to which you and the child can retreat when learning to read music becomes too tedious.
Preschool
How Do I Teach My Preschooler Piano?
Preschool Piano Worksheets
Toddler and Preschool Piano Books
Preschool Piano Activities
Preschool Piano Lesson Plans
Kids Piano In The Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom
Piano For The Very Young
The Best Preschool Piano Method
What Is The Best Age To Start Piano?
Are My Kids Ready For Piano?
Is Preschool The Best Age To Start Piano?
A Visual Approach To Children’s Piano
Preschool Piano Games
Piano For Babies
Best Age To Start Piano
Visual Preschool Piano
Start Kids With The White Keys
What Age Should You Start Piano?
Evaluating Preschool Piano Methods
Preschool Piano Roadmap
How To Develop Interest In The Piano
Beginner Piano Books for Kids
Piano Letters
Piano Music Numbers
Piano Key Numbers
Preschool Piano Lessons Near Me
Preschool Piano Music
Preschool Piano Sheet Music
Easy Piano Songs for Beginners With Letters
Easy Piano Notes for Popular Songs
Baby Piano
Play Piano By Numbers Books
It depends entirely on whether you intend to use the conventional methods. If you intend to use the conventional, “by the rule” piano methods, then don’t even think of starting before the age of six. If you intend to use a child-friendly method such as Piano by Number, by ear, by eye, there is no age limit.
Any child that can identify the numbers 1-12 is a perfect candidate to begin enjoying and learning music at even the youngest preschool piano level. But the younger the child, the simpler you will have to make it. And you will have to control your expectations.
In terms of maturity, I would suggest the age of four or five as a good age to start with Piano by Number. Soon after begin to slowly introduce the concepts of sheet music as presented in our book, I Can Read Music. If you encounter any difficulties with sheet music, take a step back and continue with Piano by Number.
Preschool piano should be marvelously entertaining and not too serious. After all, there are only a few basic musical ideas (up, down, black, white) that we are trying to get across to our eager audience.
Number the keys as in the piano below.
[piano]
A child should easily grasp the concepts presented in a beginning conventional piano book. If they don’t they are too young for sheet music. Allow them to continue enjoying Piano by Number until they are old enough to make the transition from numbers to notes.
Kids this age will want to approach the piano if you make it fun. The most you can expect is to establish a friendly relationship with the instrument. Since kids this age have barely gotten control of numbers, only the most repetitious, familiar and simple number songs will work. Try approaching the keyboard entirely visually, not relying on any printed symbols at all. Your pace should be glacial in terms of curriculum, but bright in terms of mood.
Since kids have now gotten control of numbers, you can try actual songs that they read off a page. Numbers will work best, but you might be able to introduce the symbol for Middle C, and find it on the piano. There is no point in homework other than having them find songs they like and recognize, and can navigate at the keyboard. At this age, children are still hazy on what a task is, or an assignment. Better to go with their flow, and keep them coming back to the piano for more fun.
Fingering and rhythm really do not exist at this age in terms of reproducing a song exactly. Playing with both hands is usually barely possible due to the lack of development of the corpus callosum, the bridge of nerves and ganglia that join the two brain hemispheres together. I would be very careful about insisting on anything other than a cheerful, open attitude.
This is considered the optimum age to start piano. Any age above 5 usually means a child can do a little directed work. At age 6, a child knows what a task is, and has more motor control over their fingers and hands. Fingering can be easily introduced, and the idea of rhythm broached. You still need to keep the game-like feeling to the lessons. Playing with both hands is usually possible, depending on the child, and the arrangement of the hands. You may try insisting on things, but be wise enough to know when to back off.
It is one thing for a child to recite vocally numbers as high as they can, but quite another to recognize the symbols for each number, 1 2 3 4 5 . Many preschool children can play any numbered piano key you say to them, but have difficulty playing numbers that they find on the page. Piano by Number slowly builds the abstract skills necessary to decipher musical symbols later, and promotes children’s sense of security in successfully deciphering them.
For children who cannot yet identify the symbols for numbers, the piano keyboard is an ideal place to build confidence with those symbols. It also has the the added attraction that music itself produces a “good-mood” effect that is conducive to learning more complex skills.
I recommend starting kindergarten kids with Piano by Number. Then make limited attempts at reading sheet music depending on the child’s sense of security with the piano. Kindergarten kids are very ready for games of any kind, and begin to have the skills necessary to put several hand movements together into a group of movements. Children of this age still are most comfortable with numbers. But they will tolerate more games preparing the way for reading sheet music.
Make games out of everything. Sheet music is fascinating but very tiring for kids this age. Better to expose them 5 minutes at a time than risk exhausting them. With this age, you may be able to teach them chords (three piano keys played with the left hand.) I allow them to play 2 note chords (two piano keys with the left hand) until it becomes obvious that 2 note chords are too easy.
With piano by numbers and chords under their belt, first graders are ready to conquer the right hand of sheet music, and engage in a study of chords. At this age, kids are emotionally ready to play the game called “happy and sad” wherein the teacher plays chords and has the child try to guess their (the chords) emotional or dramatic quality, happy or sad.
Kids love this game and never tire of trying to listen and assess the emotional quality of the chord! Earlier than this age, many children seem to have difficulty grasping the idea of a sound having a certain emotional quality.
1. Keep coming back to ideas, again and again.
2. Never acknowledge a child’s failure to grasp these ideas, just show comic surprise and move on.
Children at the piano have an uncanny knack of showing you an honest effort if the task is not incomprehensibly difficult. Break down complex motions into easily grasped bits.
Preschool
How Do I Teach My Preschooler Piano?
Preschool Piano Worksheets
Toddler and Preschool Piano Books
Preschool Piano Activities
Preschool Piano Lesson Plans
Kids Piano In The Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom
Piano For The Very Young
The Best Preschool Piano Method
Are My Kids Ready For Piano?
Is Preschool The Best Age To Start Piano?
Teaching Preschool Piano Visually
A Visual Approach To Children’s Piano
Preschool Piano Games
Piano For Babies
Best Age To Start Piano
Visual Preschool Piano
Start Kids With The White Keys
What Age Should You Start Piano?
Evaluating Preschool Piano Methods
Preschool Piano Roadmap
How To Develop Interest In The Piano
Beginner Piano Books for Kids
Piano Letters
Piano Music Numbers
Piano Key Numbers
Preschool Piano Lessons Near Me
Preschool Piano Music
Preschool Piano Sheet Music
Easy Piano Songs for Beginners With Letters
Easy Piano Notes for Popular Songs
Baby Piano
Play Piano By Numbers Books
Toddler and preschool piano students require the most care of all the age groups. Piano books for kids in this age group need to be entertaining and interesting.
It is so important for toddlers and preschoolers to use piano books that make the piano a fun place to be. Banish curriculum from your agenda, and think instead of the child’s point of view.
Tasks are less important than how the child feels about their experience at the piano. Jobs like finding Middle C and playing a simple song with one finger are entirely reasonable goals for toddlers and preschoolers. Insisting on proper fingering may result in disaster. Piano books for kids need to center on simplicity and fun.
The quickest way to interest a child in the piano is to number the keys. Try a familiar song:
[piano]
Preschoolers can, with patience, handle using more than one finger. Younger toddlers will instinctively use their index finger, and you should accept that and go with the flow. A good toddler music book will have little to do with reading music.
Watch their faces. As long as they’re smiling, fingering doesn’t matter. The biggest factor in a toddler’s enjoyment of their piano experience is the teacher’s ability to control their expectations.
Going from page to boring page in piano books for toddlers is a recipe for disaster.
Don’t expect fingering from a toddler, and even if they do it, don’t expect it regularly.
Learn to accept whatever crude fingering method toddlers instinctively offer, and then gently build upon that. They inevitably offer the dominant index finger, and you should applaud that. And then build on it.
Don't follow the kid's piano book, follow the kid.
When I teach toddlers, my eyes are always on the child’s face and fingers. The fingers tell me what they understand. Their faces tell me how they feel, and everything depends on this when teaching toddlers the piano.
Recommended piano books for kids: Games for the Piano, Piano Is Easy
Preschoolers are just getting used to numbers and letters. They are more likely to understand what a task is than the younger toddlers. Toddlers have yet to put together the idea of completing a group of actions. For example, playing a song all the way through is a huge accomplishment for a toddler.
Many teachers have found that having preschoolers identify numbers via the piano keyboard is a fun activity. It builds confidence with numbers and the keyboard.
Toddler piano books also help build important motor and cognitive skills. For example, left and right are concepts that are essential in life as well as the piano.
The piano keyboard is a fun way to demonstrate ideas like up and down, and left and right, soft and loud, black and white, step and skip. An endless variety of cognitive games can be played with the left/right concept.
The keyboard brings these ideas to life and engages the child quickly.
Many children can play any numbered piano key you say to them, but have difficulty playing numbers (or any musical symbol) that they find on the page.
Toddlers may have trouble with this, whereas older preschool kids may have no problem (or at least less problems) with associating musical symbols to exact piano keys.
Piano By Number builds the abstract skills necessary to comfortably decipher symbols. It promotes children’s sense of security in successfully deciphering musical symbols, no matter how young.
Seeing the first twelve numbers, 1-12, spread out on a piano helps children to imagine numbers as a sequential ordering device. You’d be surprised how many toddlers are not sure if 4 is a higher number than 3. Reading sheet music is beyond most children of this age.
The Mr. Notey Game: I pretend that my head is a “note” ( a circle) and that my forearm is a “line” and proceed to go into an elaborate set of hand signals in which the kids are able to get the idea that a “note” is on a “line” or a “in the space between the lines.” Kids this age ask for this game every week.
Probably the biggest secret of teaching music to children this age is to allow kids to be kids while they learn. If you do this, and it requires unbelievable patience and creativity, they will reward you with constant effort, and humor.
If you follow only the directions in a piano book for kids, you will miss out on subtle interactions with the child.
The younger the child, the less I expect. If they only learn that the piano is a fun place to be, you’ve had a major victory as a teacher.
Recommended piano books for kids: Piano Is Easy, Christmas Carols, The Big Book of Songs
Kindergarten kids are very ready for games of any kind. They begin to have the skills necessary to put several hand movements together into a group of movements. Children of this age still are most comfortable with numbers, but will tolerate more games preparing the way for reading sheet music. But you must make games out of everything, like “Mr. Notey,” (above.)
Click on FUN AND GAMES or see below to see some of the piano games that children of this age will enjoy. I'd recommend stepping away from sheet music as soon as you see their eyes start to show exhaustion, perhaps 5 minutes at most.
Sheet music is fascinating but very tiring for kids this age. Better to expose them 5 minutes at a time than risk exhausting them and making them feel like failures. With this age, you may be able to teach them chords visually (three piano keys played with the left hand) but usually I allow them to play 2 note chords (two piano keys with the left hand) until it becomes obvious that 2 note chords are too easy.
I don’t insist that children play with both hands at this point, that is, chords with left hand and melody (numbers) with the right hand. It is enough that they can make their way through a few moments of a song that I show them, always carefully chosen to allow them to master a simple-enough task.
A child this age should begin to easily have knowledge of the first three chords known as C, F and G. Any child can do this with enough focused, fun repetition. If a child does begin to read sheet music, be careful to gain complete mastery of the notes of the right hand, say the first 5 keys above Middle C, before attempting to introduce the left hand. It is my feeling that merely introducing the idea of “lines and spaces” (sheet music) is more than a victory at this stage. The reason for this is that sheet music is much more of an abstraction than numbers for children of this age.
Children gravitate to what is most comfortable for them, and you can bet at this age that it will be “piano by numbers,” because it is less abstract than sheet music. “Lines and spaces” functions in the same way. It limits the variables to two, instead of the multiple dimensions sheet music demands. Children who are allowed the room to succeed at Piano by Number no matter how glacial their pace, are perfect candidates for reading sheet music, because they are properly prepared.
Recommended piano books for kids: Piano Is Easy, The Big Book of Songs, I Can Read Music
First graders seem magically wired to try the piano! All the physical perceptions necessary are in place; numbers are no problem, playing with two hands is no problem. But if a child has difficulty with playing two hands simultaneously, do not insist. Most kids this age have great difficulty with two handed maneuvers. It is enough to expose them to the idea that two hands are involved, eventually simultaneously.
With piano by number and chords under their belt, first graders are ready to conquer the right hand of sheet music, and engage in a serious study of chords. At this age, kids are emotionally ready to play the game called “happy and sad” wherein the teacher plays chords and has the child try to guess their (the chords) emotional or dramatic quality, happy or sad. Kids never tire of trying to listen and assess the emotional quality of the chord. Earlier than this age, many children seem to have difficulty grasping the idea of a sound (the piano chord) having a certain quality (happy or sad.)
At this point, it also becomes possible to introduce “finger games,” that is, games that teach a child to move beyond using the index finger. I always allow kids to start with the index finger, if that’s what comfortable. It may take a long time to get a child to use all ten fingers properly. But it is worth waiting for, especially if, in the meantime, you are teaching them other valuable things. Believe it or not, kids will let you know when they are ready to use all five fingers.
I Can Read Music e Book Download
Recommended piano books for kids: I Can Read Music
I’ll tell you the simple formula for success at reading music. It has three stages:
1. Teach the notes and the numbers. Get the kids to decipher the commands and play the correct keys as best they can, with whatever finger comes to their mind.
2. Introduce the idea of five fingers, slowly, as a game, as a joke. I always say, when they play with only their index finger, “Oh, you were born with only one finger on each hand! Wait! I see other fingers under there, all curled up!” Try that 50 times and they will start using more fingers all by themselves, I guarantee it.
3. Rhythm is best left to last. The only thing I do at this point is to play rhythm games. I never, ever insist on rhythm in a piece of printed music, numbers or sheet. Don’t even think of rhythm in the usual sense for first graders. Better to try simple rhythm games like “fours” that give children the idea of regularity, of pattern, of repetition.
To start the process of learning fingering, I begin with a game called “threesies,” in which they play, starting from Middle C; 123, 234, 345 456, etc using the right hand thumb, index and third finger in ascending order. Kids love the complexity of this, but if it is too difficult after several tries, then try something else for a while.
1. Keep coming back to ideas, again and again. If they make a mistake, express comic surprise and move on.
2. Never acknowledge a child’s failure to grasp these ideas, just show comic surprise and move on. They’ll get the idea that mistakes are noted, but never punished.
Children at the piano have an uncanny knack of showing you an honest effort if the task is not incomprehensibly difficult. Break down complex motions into easily grasped bits.
REFERENCES
Preschool
How Do I Teach My Preschooler Piano?
Preschool Piano Worksheets
Toddler and Preschool Piano Books
Preschool Piano Activities
Preschool Piano Lesson Plans
Kids Piano In The Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom
Piano For The Very Young
The Best Preschool Piano Method
What Is The Best Age To Start Piano?
Are My Kids Ready For Piano?
Is Preschool The Best Age To Start Piano?
Teaching Preschool Piano Visually
A Visual Approach To Children’s Piano
Preschool Piano Games
Piano For Babies
Best Age To Start Piano
Visual Preschool Piano
Start Kids With The White Keys
What Age Should You Start Piano?
Evaluating Preschool Piano Methods
Preschool Piano Roadmap
How To Develop Interest In The Piano
Beginner Piano Books for Kids
Piano Letters
Piano Music Numbers
Piano Key Numbers
Preschool Piano Lessons Near Me
Preschool Piano Music
Preschool Piano Sheet Music
Easy Piano Songs for Beginners With Letters
Easy Piano Notes for Popular Songs
Baby Piano
Play Piano By Numbers Books
Disguising repetition of short passages is essential to a child’s enjoyment of piano lessons. In piano teaching, a short portion of a piano piece is usually called a “passage.” A passage has to be worked on, like tilling a field, until it is smooth and may be recombined with the rest of the piece. But this is not so easy, especially with younger kids. Doing something even twice may be boring to them, and once they are bored, you will work much harder to regain their attention.
Thus your efforts should be focused on disguising the repetition that kids find so numbing. Younger children require more creative effort on the part of the teacher in order to make the repetition of passages palatable to their shorter attention spans.
We repeat passages in order to achieve continuity. Music is most pleasurable when it is continuous, not broken up by the stumblings of the inexperienced performer. For example, if you listen to a pianist or a band or sing in church, the group doesn’t stop if there is a mistake. That is musical continuity. And continuity comes from familiarity. If you are familiar with every part of a song, it is reasonable to assume you can play the music continuously. This is so that the listener can enjoy it.
So the object of repetition is to familiarize your brain with every little wrinkle of the piece. Think of it as driving a thought deep into your subconscious, into the back of your brain. Glenn Gould, famed concert pianist and iconoclast, remarked that sometimes he looked down at his hands and thought he wasn’t playing: the music was so ingrained in his brain that he was not aware of the efforts required to play Bach fugues without really thinking about it!
That’s what you’re after, a kind of out-of-body experience where you know the piece so well that your fingers almost play it by themselves. So how do we disguise repetition for the younger kids? There are many ways to do this. Below is just one.
First, teach the child the rudiments of six short piano pieces they know outside of piano lessons, like Jingle Bells. It doesn’t have to be a whole song, it can be a passage or fragment. Then, write the names of the songs on a Post-It in a numbered list. Take a pair of dice and let the child throw and see which song they have to play. This takes the tedium out of playing one piece over and over. Besides, the dice make it a game.
Second, bait and switch. Work on a passage a little, then say, “Oh, let’s drop that for a while.” Drop the current activity as soon as you see the first signs of fatigue. Work on something else for a few moments, and then suddenly come back to the first, abandoned task. It will seem fresher to the child the second time if there has been a break.
Third, make a game of it. Ask them to bet their mom’s sofa that they can’t play that song again perfectly. Make the basis of your bet something utterly ridiculous, like their washing machine, but act very serious. They will play along. As they repeat it, maybe point out a thing or two, a fingering here, add a part there, and work on it a few seconds, then move on.
Take all three of these ideas and combine them, and you have a child-friendly way of “practicing.” By using piano games you can repeat short passages over and over without the child feeling exhausted.
A kid’s piano teacher is, in reality, something in between a game-show host and a drill sergeant. Too much of one or the other and the child’s progress and enthusiasm will suffer. Offering a child a piano game in equal measure to hard work is a recipe for a happy student who proceeds at their own, comfortable pace.
Practicing
Give The Kid A Reason To Practice
How To Get Your Child To Practice
How To Practice Piano for Kids
Setting Up A Child’s Practice Regime
Why Won’t My Child Practice Piano?
How To Make Piano Practice Interesting
Rules for Piano Practice
Don’t Call It Practicing
How To Get To Carnegie Hall
Don’t Practice, Say “Go Play.”
Making Repetition Fun For Kids
How does one find a good piano teacher for a child? The first step is to know what you’re looking for.
I have sorry statistics for you that your local piano teacher doesn’t really want you to know. 90% of kids who start piano today will quit within three months. Why, you ask? Most piano teachers are honest people, but the piano is simply difficult to master, as any musical instrument is.
Piano teaching is difficult, no matter how you do it. And statistically, perhaps some large percentage of those 90% who quit were perhaps never destined to play very well in the first place. Personally, having worked with thousands of kids, I am of the opposite opinion. Any child can love and play the piano in their own way.
Still, there has to be a reason why most piano lessons turn out to be less fun than the child was expecting. The reason the kids quit is because of the piano teachers themselves. The sad truth is that most piano teachers don’t try to get their students fired up about piano. They simply go from page to page in a standard text and see if the child can stand it. And believe me, it is boring to have to play these exercise pieces again and again.
Of course, going from page to page in a text is very easy for the teacher. There is little creativity required on the teacher’s part. And as all parents know, you’ll have to be creative if you want to hold the attention of your six-year old.
Piano teachers apply the same methods to the average child’s humble musical gifts as they would apply to someone clearly destined for Carnegie Hall. A creative, intelligent teacher takes a good look at each individual student, and takes the time to find what factors will affect the child’s progress:
1. Is the child happy?
2. Do they have motor skills, such as finger coordination? Hand movement?
3. Can they distinguish left from right?
4. What is the child’s personality? Quiet? Exuberant? Belligerent?
5. Do they know how to complete a simple task?
6. Can they memorize?
Each one of these factors affects how an intelligent piano teacher will approach that student, as an individual.
The first barrier to cross is expectation: what is the child expecting? Did they hear stories from Mom and Dad about old Mrs. Perkins, who rapped their fingers when they made a mistake? Or did they hear how wonderful piano lessons would be? In any case, this piano lesson is their piano lesson, not yours. You had better find out how to communicate with this child as an individual in the first five minutes or it’s over.
One approach that works wonders is humor. And playing. Make a joke and play a song for them. If you do that first, you answer two childish questions that the child will inevitably be asking themselves:
1. Is this teacher a kind person?
2. Will playing the piano be fun?
The answer to those two questions had better be, “yes.” Otherwise, you have already created a barrier between yourself and the child.
Most piano teachers are not avid players, comedians or game show hosts. Many are either very young and inexperienced, or old and tired of the business. It’s rare to have a good player as a teacher, but the rewards are endless.
The hardest obstacle to hurdle at first is to instill the idea that piano can be lots of fun, and a good pianist vaults that barrier instantly. Kids love to hear a tune, a funny song, something they know from TV or outside the lesson. The older they are, the more important this becomes.
Avoid the following kinds of piano teachers if you have a young child:
1. Disciplinarians: there is always time for discipline if you can get them to love it first.
2. Gruff: you need someone who knows how to handle a child, and gruffness NEVER works. Gruffness is the last resort of the impatient.
3. Impatient: the first mark of a real piano teacher is the patience of a block of stone. Learning the piano requires repetition, which a clever teacher will disguise or make illuminating.
It is not easy to be a good piano teacher. Many factors will work against you:
1. Repetition is not inherently fun unless it is something that interests you
2. Mood: kids are people, too. They have good days and bad days. Have the sense to find out which it is. Modify your teaching pace accordingly.
3. Time of lesson: is it right after school? Does the child need rest or food?
4. Overloaded schedules: all kids have too many activities and to them, you are just one more. Don’t make it difficult and dull.
5. Do they want lessons, or are they doing it to please Mom and Dad?
Often what is required is to lower the bar so far that the child succeeds at something, no matter how small. Which would you prefer as a teacher? A tiny victory at some aspect of piano, or a profound sense of defeat over a task that only you deem necessary to master? The point is that the piano and music is such a vast endeavor that there is always some small area that can be worked on if the child isn’t following your curriculum well.
Here are some examples of what you can do during a “bad” lesson.
1. Start playing. Move the child over, get them a chair, but start playing that piano and show them why they came in the first place.
2. Play ear training games. Listening games. Counting games.
3. Talk about the famous composers, play a piece by them, talk about the composer’s life. There isn’t a child alive that doesn’t want to hear of the adventure of the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri. If they’re old enough, tell them the theory that Salieri murdered Mozart. Make it up if you have to, but hold their interest.
4. Stop concentrating on reading music. Play by ear. Memorize. Play by number.
Children that have been taught with this benevolent, fun approach, will reward you with a love of the instrument. That may lead to unearthing some of the talent that lies with them. It’s your job as a teacher to find and nurture that talent, and it may not be the kind of talent you’re expecting. Some kids don’t know Mozart from a hole in the ground. You may have to play music from TV and the movies to reach them.
I’ve never met a kid who wasn’t interested in playing a familiar tune on the piano if you make it easy enough to be pleasurable.
Piano Teaching
Using Piano in the K-12 School Classroom
So You Want To Be A Piano Teacher?
The Art of Teaching Children’s Piano
Piano Starting Methods
Starting A New Child Piano Student
Even A Good Piano Teacher Has A Bad Day
What Sort Of Piano Teacher Are You?
Carrot and Donkey: Find The Interest In The Piano
What’s The Point of Piano Lessons?
Patient Piano Teachers, Pro and Con
Teaching Children’s Piano
Piano Lesson Minute By Minute
A Short History of Piano Methods
Piano Fun for the Teacher, Fun for the Kids
A patient piano teacher knows when to back off, when to be less demanding, and when to switch to an activity that provides relief from stress. The child’s stress usually comes from the teacher’s insistence on following a set curriculum, with a set timetable.
Kids don’t practice because kids are kids, not because they are lazy.
Browbeating them and insisting on concentration when they can’t deliver it is torture to a kid.
A better approach is to know what you want to teach the child. Then find out what part of that curriculum is palatable to them that day, and try that. Curriculum at this level can be taught in any order, and complying with the child makes them cooperative. Sometimes kids are in no mood for anything, and then you have to back off completely.
Be crafty, and disguise a simple skill as nothing. Force never works. Force always has an equal reaction, which is apathy. Try to see it from the child's point of view.
Combine the old school, conventional methods with the newer ideas, like Piano By Number. If you present your tool chest in the right proportion, the child will be interested, regardless of their mood. You need to be constantly assessing the state of the patient/student to see what they are capable of at that moment.
Retreat to numbers when the child tires of reading music. When they get tired of numbers, I switch to piano games. When they get tired of piano games, I switch to hilarious music history. Once they are laughing, we can start again at the top of the list.
The best advice on salesmanship I ever got was from a real estate entrepreneur, who said to me, “You’ve got to have a thermometer ten feet long to sense the mood in the room. That’s what sells: sensitivity.” Students who play under their own steam want to play. At times kids will simply not be in the mood for anything.
At such times, I play a game called ATOMIC PIANO LESSON. The child sits on a chair or the sofa, and I play piano, asking them for their reactions to the music I am playing. It is really ear-training, but they will never know it. I ask them to play a C chord while they sit on the sofa, six feet away.
Of course they can’t, but they pretend to reach. Then they laugh. I seem to be asking for the impossible. Once they are laughing, they will return to the piano and play a tune or two, usually with one finger. We laugh. But we are still in agreement, because we had fun: we will keep trying. Tomorrow is another day.
Piano Teaching Style
If It’s Fun For The Teacher, It’s Fun For The Kids
Piano Methods and Children’s Personalities
The Backwards Piano Method
Reverse Psychology and Children’s Piano
Help Your Child Enjoy The Piano
Ten Rules for A Pleasant Piano Teaching Atmosphere
If You’re Having Fun, You’re Not Learning
The Difference Between the Worst and Best Piano Teacher
A Piano Teacher’s Emotions
A Pleasant Piano Lesson Atmosphere
The Use of Humor in Piano Lessons
Make Use of Your Student’s Sense of Humor
The Piano Whisperer
Fitting the Piano Method to the Child
Soft Piano vs. Hard Piano
Why I Teach Piano
Advice To A Young Piano Teacher
Teaching Children's Piano
Guilt Is The Wrong Way To Buy Attention
The Piano Teacher’s Tone of Voice
Knowing When To Back Off
Piano Candy: The Case For Bribery
Why Nagging Your Child To Practice Won’t Work
How To Make Your Kids Love The Piano
Teaching Kid’s Piano Is Like Herding Cats
Repeated Victory Will Make You Invincible
Ratio of Talk To Activity in Piano Lessons
On Which Side of the Piano Do You Teach?
Setting the Mood Of Children’s Piano Lessons
Why Kids Succeed At The Piano
Child Pianists Are Like Guide Dogs
The Purpose Of The First Five Piano Lessons
The Real Goal Of Children’s Piano Lessons
The Philosophy Of Piano For Kids
How Simple Should Piano Lessons Be?
Piano Toys You Should Bring To A Lesson
Fun Kid’s Piano
Joyful Piano Lessons
The Invisible Piano Method
Make Beginning Piano Simple
The Reverse Piano Method
Nurture Your Piano Students
Against Disciplinarian Piano Teachers
Joyful piano lessons for kids have better results. It is always easier to teach a happy child. I was teaching a ten year-old boy one day, and there was a commotion in the next room. His younger brother, three or four, was dancing up a storm as a reaction to his brother’s spirited playing. The older brother and I were playing SLEIGH RIDE by Leroy Anderson with abandon, repeating it again and again.
It wasn’t really a piano lesson by then, it was just fun. The little brother could not contain himself, so carried away was he with the spirit of the music. He danced and twirled to the point that the rest of the family came in to watch him.
If you think about it, the child was showing us what a child really thinks music is. It is bubbly, fun stuff that makes you move whether you want to or not. His older brother had learned how to play the complexities of the music, but the younger brother was expressing his feelings directly, without any skill other than the joy of movement. The sad thing is that most piano teachers forget this love of movement and music in their mad dash for musical literacy.
The hardest trick to learn as a piano teacher is to keep that joyful spirit alive while teaching a child the minutiae of playing the piano. It is easy to crush a child’s enthusiasm under the weight of curriculum. The only way to truly motivate a child at the piano is to never lose sight of that joy, to incorporate it into the lessons as much as possible.
Try to balance carefully the two elements, joy and work. Most piano teachers are afraid to lose control and surrender to joy in music. But that is exactly what will inspire your student to do more work. So when the moment comes in your next piano lesson, choose joy over work for a moment and watch the results. Joy is the most powerful taskmaster of all to a child.
Piano Teaching Style
If It’s Fun For The Teacher, It’s Fun For The Kids
Piano Methods and Children’s Personalities
The Backwards Piano Method
Reverse Psychology and Children’s Piano
Help Your Child Enjoy The Piano
Ten Rules for A Pleasant Piano Teaching Atmosphere
If You’re Having Fun, You’re Not Learning
The Difference Between the Worst and Best Piano Teacher
A Piano Teacher’s Emotions
A Pleasant Piano Lesson Atmosphere
The Use of Humor in Piano Lessons
Make Use of Your Student’s Sense of Humor
The Piano Whisperer
Fitting the Piano Method to the Child
Soft Piano vs. Hard Piano
Why I Teach Piano
Advice To A Young Piano Teacher
Teaching Children's Piano
Guilt Is The Wrong Way To Buy Attention
The Piano Teacher’s Tone of Voice
Knowing When To Back Off
Piano Candy: The Case For Bribery
Why Nagging Your Child To Practice Won’t Work
How To Make Your Kids Love The Piano
Teaching Kid’s Piano Is Like Herding Cats
Repeated Victory Will Make You Invincible
Ratio of Talk To Activity in Piano Lessons
On Which Side of the Piano Do You Teach?
Setting the Mood Of Children’s Piano Lessons
Why Kids Succeed At The Piano
Child Pianists Are Like Guide Dogs
The Purpose Of The First Five Piano Lessons
The Real Goal Of Children’s Piano Lessons
The Philosophy Of Piano For Kids
How Simple Should Piano Lessons Be?
Piano Toys You Should Bring To A Lesson
Fun Kid’s Piano
The Invisible Piano Method
A Patient Piano Teacher
Make Beginning Piano Simple
The Reverse Piano Method
Nurture Your Piano Students
Against Disciplinarian Piano Teachers
Fitting the piano method to the child is the wisest way to begin the great journey of piano lessons.
Any child can be made into a piano player. It’s just that almost none of these children will ever be fluent music readers. Very few amateurs are fluent music readers. Both types will end up “piano players” except that one type, the “read everything,” will go further with reading music. There are advantages and disadvantages to each type of child. A clever piano teacher knows how to combine the approaches into a single method that inspires the child.
The majority of children will never have facility at reading much more than a few notes of the treble (right hand) clef. Some children will master the entire language of musical notation. They are the exception, and very rare. Find out which type of child you have. Do you have the “never read” or the “read everything” child?
And don’t forget every variation in between. Determining this will help you set reasonable expectations, and help you design curriculum that gets the child playing first, not reading first.
The “read everything” child will eventually be self-managing. They will be able to get all the musical information they need from the page. Thus they will be increasingly more independent and musically literate as time goes on. The “never read” child will have to manage absorbing music in a blend of various other piano methods, none of them conventional: by ear, by eye, etc. Most can eventually manage knowledge of and facility with a few notes of music notation, but you must prepare them correctly.
This means that the “never read” is a perfect candidate to get their all of their musical information from popular sheet music if you teach them chords. All popular music piano methods are based on this rubric: chords in left hand, right hand plays the notes of the treble clef.
The “singer-songwriter” method is the basis of popular methods like Play Piano In A Flash. It is, in fact, the way that almost all adult hobbyists play. Very few people end up being able to sight-read the two musical languages, left and right hand, simultaneously, with any degree of facility or enjoyment. Don’t expect it from the average child except in halting, fitful moments. The best method seems to be a blend of the two approaches.
Piano Teaching Style
If It’s Fun For The Teacher, It’s Fun For The Kids
Piano Methods and Children’s Personalities
The Backwards Piano Method
Reverse Psychology and Children’s Piano
Help Your Child Enjoy The Piano
Ten Rules for A Pleasant Piano Teaching Atmosphere
If You’re Having Fun, You’re Not Learning
The Difference Between the Worst and Best Piano Teacher
A Piano Teacher’s Emotions
A Pleasant Piano Lesson Atmosphere
The Use of Humor in Piano Lessons
Make Use of Your Student’s Sense of Humor
The Piano Whisperer
Soft Piano vs. Hard Piano
Why I Teach Piano
Advice To A Young Piano Teacher
Teaching Children's Piano
Guilt Is The Wrong Way To Buy Attention
The Piano Teacher’s Tone of Voice
Knowing When To Back Off
Piano Candy: The Case For Bribery
Why Nagging Your Child To Practice Won’t Work
How To Make Your Kids Love The Piano
Teaching Kid’s Piano Is Like Herding Cats
Repeated Victory Will Make You Invincible
Ratio of Talk To Activity in Piano Lessons
On Which Side of the Piano Do You Teach?
Setting the Mood Of Children’s Piano Lessons
Why Kids Succeed At The Piano
Child Pianists Are Like Guide Dogs
The Purpose Of The First Five Piano Lessons
The Real Goal Of Children’s Piano Lessons
The Philosophy Of Piano For Kids
How Simple Should Piano Lessons Be?
Piano Toys You Should Bring To A Lesson
Fun Kid’s Piano
Joyful Piano Lessons
The Invisible Piano Method
A Patient Piano Teacher
Make Beginning Piano Simple
The Reverse Piano Method
Nurture Your Piano Students
Against Disciplinarian Piano Teachers
Why is Middle C so important? Because it is the center of a kid’s musical universe. To them, a page of notes is a sea of ants with no rhyme or reason. And the piano keyboard is another mystery to them.
Look at the drawing above. Kids are expected to find some relationship between the two vastly different graphic systems (the notes on the five lines of the staff, above, vs. the keys on the piano, below.)
They barely look at the black keys. You have to get them to look closely at the keys.
Middle C is important because it is the center of the musical universe for kids. Kids need this center, this reference point to navigate the difficulties of sheet music. Home base.
Above is a five lined “staff” with the note Middle C. Teach the child to be an observer of the staff.
The objective of I CAN READ MUSIC is to get the child to distinguish between Middle C and notes that are on lines or spaces, as in the drawing below:
Now take a page of music and ask if notes are on one of three choices:
Part of the importance of Middle C is that kids seem to calculate other notes in relation to the “home base” of Middle C.
I Can Read Music e Book Download
Going back to numbers, we place the number 1 on the same key as Middle C. This is because, numbers or notes, Middle C is still the center of the universe.
To begin the process of finding Middle C, look through the page below and find all the Middle C’s you can. I run my index finger under the line of notes, and have the child ring a library bell when they see a Middle C.
Find the middle C's above.
In terms of reading music, don’t proceed further until the child unfailingly grasps the idea and look of Middle C. A prepared child is ready to understand new methods.
REFERENCES
Reading Music
Why Delay Reading Music
What Comes After Numbers In Kid’s Piano
You Say Read, I Say Play
Reading Music for Kids Step By Step
The Basic Piano Curriculum for Kids
The Transition From Numbers To Notes
Preventing Kid’s Struggle To Read Music
Resistance To Reading Music Is Age Based
Stay Sane Teaching Kids To Read Music
Helping Children Read Music
Helping Your Child Find Middle C
What Kids Understand About Sheet Music
An Effective Strategy for Kids Reading Music
How To Read Music For Kids
The Battle To Read Music
Stickers for Reading Music
Why Is Middle C So Important?
What Comes After Numbers?
Start With Numbers, Then Read Music
Start Kids With Numbers, Then Read Music
Helping Children Read Music
From Numbers To Notes
Why Kids Resist Reading Music
How To Help Your Kids Read Music
Start With Numbers, Then Read Music
Beginner Piano Sheet Music for Kids
Don’t Start With Reading Music
Easy Piano Songs Sheet Music
Piano Letters
There’s a simple reason why kid’s piano songs are on the white keys at the beginning. The black keys seem mysterious to a child, while the white keys are at least a nice, continuous stairway. The white keys are uniformly 3/4 inch wide, but the black keys are narrower and have an uneven pattern of 3 / 2 / 3 / -- that is confusing to kids.
There are certain kid’s songs that are timeless favorites, depending on age. The youngest kids may not recognize popular favorites like Star Wars and Disney-type tunes. They will be more familiar with nursery songs like Twinkle, Twinkle and things like the Star Spangled Banner. It depends on what their parents let them view and listen to. Older kids have wider exposure.
I have parents who have yet to introduce Star Wars to six year olds, and others who play Super Freak (Rick James) and let the kids listen, and watch Jaws with their 7 year-old. The kid’s songs that are best for early piano lessons are recognizable songs that can be played on the white keys alone.
This is because it is too confusing at first to deal with the black keys. This is especially true of younger kids. In addition, it is best to use songs that have mostly adjacent keys, and avoid skips. Songs on the white keys of the piano in this category might be:
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
| 5 6 * 5 | 3 * 8 * | 6 * 5 * |
| 5 6 5 6 | 5 * 8 | 7 * * * |
[piano]
Whether or not they play with fingering is optional. It would be best if they can manage to organize their fingers. Many familiar songs can be done on white keys only: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, We’re Off to See The Wizard, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is perhaps the most familiar, after Jingle Bells, for kids starting out at the piano. You’d be surprised to see how delighted a child is to be able to play a familiar song like this one!
REFERENCES
Selecting Songs
Selecting Children’s Songs For The Piano
Kid’s Music and The Piano
Using Familiar Songs In Piano Lessons
Fingering and Familiar Songs
Use Recognizable Songs In Piano Lessons
Kid’s Piano Songs
Easy Songs To Play On Keyboard
Easy Popular Songs To Play On Piano
Piano By Numbers Book
Start Kids With White Keys
1. Distinguish left from right on the piano keyboard.
2. Distinguish up/down on the piano keyboard.
3. Understand the qualities of happy and sad when listening to music.
4. Find Middle C.
Until the above tasks are accomplished, there is little point in pushing further.
A piano is a good gathering place for preschool children, for piano lessons or just for musical fun. In fact, you would do well to make your music lesson or class into a series of fun preschool activities centered around the piano, rather than pedagogical lectures.
For example, rather than try to read music, you might explore the pattern of two and three black keys on the piano. That skill, finding one’s way around the black keys, is a precursor to the skill of reading music. Just playing a happy tune draws kids into the warm sound of a piano, and excites them, creating interest.
Try these fun activities with a piano:
Introduce fingering in the abstract, apart from reading music. I use a game called Threesies, in which the thumb, index and middle finger play the same pattern of notes over and over. Try it on the online piano below:
[piano]
At this point you might try to ask about the two black keys. Ask if anyone sees a pattern of black keys. Let them come up to the piano and look. Now tell them that the most important note is called “C,” and it is to the left of the two black keys.
Of course, now you must fight a separate battle, which is the difference between left and right, a skill not yet mastered by many preschoolers. Finding Middle C actually helps a lot of preschoolers strengthen the left/right difference, because it attaches an external value to it, the ability to make a certain musical sound, thus making it more fun.
Then have the kids find the groups of two and three black keys, and make up games distinguishing them, such as, “Is this the group of three or the group of two?” Adopt the manner of a carnival barker and make them find the answer more and more quickly. I always say, “Hurry up there kid, we got others waiting, y’know.” Therefore I make a tick tock sound to simulate a game show clock. Kids love a theatrical conceit.
Now that you’ve got them interested, here are more activities:
The standard musical games work well to relieve the tension:
You can also try making up a musical drama, and divide the kids into characters. Even if chaos ensues, and it will, it will be good musical fun. I call this game Instant Musical, and you can easily use our Play Along Songs to do this activity.
REFERENCES
Preschool
How Do I Teach My Preschooler Piano?
Preschool Piano Worksheets
Toddler and Preschool Piano Books
Preschool Piano Activities
Preschool Piano Lesson Plans
Kids Piano In The Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom
Piano For The Very Young
The Best Preschool Piano Method
What Is The Best Age To Start Piano?
Are My Kids Ready For Piano?
Is Preschool The Best Age To Start Piano?
Teaching Preschool Piano Visually
A Visual Approach To Children’s Piano
Preschool Piano Games
Piano For Babies
Best Age To Start Piano
Visual Preschool Piano
Start Kids With The White Keys
What Age Should You Start Piano?
Evaluating Preschool Piano Methods
Preschool Piano Roadmap
How To Develop Interest In The Piano
Beginner Piano Books for Kids
Piano Letters
Piano Music Numbers
Piano Key Numbers
Preschool Piano Lessons Near Me
Preschool Piano Music
Preschool Piano Sheet Music
Easy Piano Songs for Beginners With Letters
Easy Piano Notes for Popular Songs
Baby Piano
Play Piano By Numbers Books
The best way to introduce fingering is to play finger organization games which teach kids to use the five fingers as a unit. Fingering is the process whereby a group of fingers are selected for a group of notes. It is one of the key organizing factors for a pianist, and is what makes playing quickly and fluidly possible. Young kids start out jabbing with the index finger, which I permit to get the process going.
Later, we need to broach the subject of grouping the fingers. Kids usually understand the idea of the fingers as a team, much like a basketball team. There are strong fingers and stronger players, and then weak fingers and weaker players. For this reason, treating the fingers as a group is difficult both physically and intellectually for kids. Many kids put up fierce resistance to grouping the fingers.
The three strongest fingers are the thumb, index and third (of the right hand). I concentrate on training those first. Thus all our energy is concentrated on getting the first three fingers to act as a group. I use comparisons such as legs walking, staircases, anything that will get them wiggling those three fingers in a row.
I always ask kids which fingers they would instinctively use to turn a doorknob, maybe asking them to go open a door. They use the first three fingers of the right hand.
Often they need guidance to start using the thumb as the first in the group. They are instinctively used to their index finger. But the thumb is strong, and all children have an easy time starting to use it as the primary finger in the hand group. The thumb is shorter than the other fingers and to a child it is rather strange and useless.
You may have to literally take their fingers and move them like a puppet to get the idea across, and I often do this, as all children respond when you gently push the fingers in the proper way so they feel the muscle from the inside. Show, rather than tell. If they don’t understand the hand position required for the thumb, move their fingers into position.
I also have them play the fingers as a group outside of the piano keyboard, on a book, any flat surface. This is to defuse the complexity of the keyboard and show them that the fingers are really involved in a simple pattern. I also use the game of having them hold their fingers in the correct position and I push the fingers down in the correct order, once again giving them a physical idea of what the passage requires in terms of finger movement.
[piano]
Look at your fingers as you grab for a doorknob or pencil and you will see that the dominant fingers are the first three, thumb index and third.
REFERENCES
Fingering
What Is Fingering?
Piano Fingering Diagram
One-Finger Johnny
Developing Children’s Piano Finger Instincts
Exploring Fingering
Kid’s Finger Olympics
When Is Fingering Necessary?
Piano Fingering for Kids
Children’s Piano Fingering Strategy
Piano Fingering for Preschool Kids
Kid’s Piano Fingering 101
Make Piano Fingering Logical
Piano Fingering for the Very Young
Piano Finger Numbers Worksheet
Fingering and Familiar Songs
Piano fingering for the very young is a matter of common sense. The younger the child, the less digital control they have. My message to you is that you must adopt an attitude of patience because young kids are barely aware they have five different fingers!
This is why, with toddlers and preschool kids, I allow them to use their dominant index finger because that is what they will instinctively offer you. Thus, until the child is capable of more, accept the uni-finger method. Move on to teach other things until they are ready. Choose your battles.
Fingering, in the classic sense, is the art of assigning the fingers to specific keys. This is in order to make difficult groups of notes easier to play. But younger kids need first to be made aware that they even have ten fingers, of five different types (thumb, index, middle, ring, pinkie.) They will have played “This Little Piggie,” but piano fingering is infinitely more complicated. Instead of insisting on fingering, you would do better to explore what the child actually knows about their fingers, both singly and in groups.
Here are steps to make younger kids more aware of their differing fingers. I can almost guarantee you they have never thought about any of this. Since they are offering you the index finger, start suggesting they use BOTH index fingers. Let them choose when to use them.
Without them knowing it, they are now exercising both hemispheres of their brain. This is because the left index finger is controlled by the right brain, and the right index finger is controlled by the left brain.
Next, point out that there is a finger right next to the index, the third finger, which might be very useful. Suddenly you’ll find the child fascinated with using the two fingers (second and third) as a pair. Most likely they will make a childish game of walking up the piano with those two fingers acting like two legs. The fourth and fifth fingers on a child’s hand are almost useless at first, so introduce the thumb now.
Hold up your hand and point out that the thumb is half as long as any other finger, and yet is twice as strong. Kids avoid the thumb because it is shorter. They prefer the longer fingers that reach the keys more easily (2,3,4 and 5.) Your first major objective is to get the child to use the first three fingers, thumb, index and third, as a group. I made up a game called “threesies” to help develop this skill.
Threesies Fingering Game
| 1 2 3 | 2 3 4 | 3 4 5 | 4 5 6 | 5 6 7 | 6 7 8 |
Mary Had A Little Lamb
(played with thumb on 1, index on 2, third on 3.)
| 3 2 1 2 | 3 3 3 * | 2 2 2 * | 3 5 5 * |
[piano]
These groups of three notes (123,234, etc.) are played with the same finger group: thumb, index, and third. From here, it is an easy jump to get the child to use all five fingers, since they have already established strength with the first three (thumb, index and third.)
Next, try "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and play it using the first three fingers. It is the only song that fits these three fingers, but it is relatively easy to do, and introduces younger kids to fingering in a very gentle way.
Fingering
What Is Fingering?
Piano Fingering Diagram
One-Finger Johnny
Developing Children’s Piano Finger Instincts
Exploring Fingering
Kid’s Finger Olympics
Finger Organization Games
When Is Fingering Necessary?
Piano Fingering for Kids
Children’s Piano Fingering Strategy
Piano Fingering for Preschool Kids
Kid’s Piano Fingering 101
Make Piano Fingering Logical
Piano Fingering for the Very Young
Piano Finger Numbers Worksheet
Fingering and Familiar Songs
Piano By Number started as piano books for special needs children. There were no books even remotely useful for these kids, so I created them. The Piano By Number series can be used by any child, special or not.
I’ve taught children with every major disability from Down’s to Tourrete syndrome. I am attracted to the challenge of teaching them. In fact, the idea of writing Piano Is Easy came to me while teaching a brilliant kid who had Down’s syndrome.
He was so enthusiastic about music and piano that I became caught up in the idea of communicating musical ideas to him. Sheet music was useless, since it took so long to get familiar and proficient with it. His attention span was short, so I needed a more immediate way of getting him to play the songs he wanted on the piano. I struck on the idea of numbering the piano keys, and so Piano By Number was born.
The week after I had numbered a few keys, I came back and he had numbered every key on the piano, some of them with his own system of symbols. We concentrated on the central area of the keyboard and he soon learned chords. He could easily play all twelve chords.
From my experience with him, I learned to concentrate on the areas of success, not an abstract curriculum that meant nothing to his experience of the piano. All that mattered was that he enjoyed and progressed, however modestly, at the piano.
If you were to ask my advice in finding a piano book for special needs children, I’d point out the following:
Having stated the limitations of special children, let me also point out that in my experience, the level of musical talent in these children is often very high. For example, the greatest music theory genius child I know is an eight year-old autistic boy.
This child can sight read simple piano music, and then you can say, “Play it starting on this key, Bobby,” and he is able to transpose (this includes the black keys) the music into any key you want.
I can tell you that many “professional” musicians do not possess the skill of transposition.
This skill and many others are at a level far beyond what one might ever expect from “normal” kids. The difficulty is drawing it all into a workable program for the special needs of that individual child. You’ll find organizing all their genius is the hardest job. A piano teacher who teaches special children must commit to finding a level of skill that the child can enjoy. At the piano, make sure both of you are having a lot of fun.
REFERENCES:
PIANO BY NUMBER AND DOWN'S SYNDROME
PIANO BOOKS FOR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN
PIANO BY NUMBER FOR A SEVERELY DISABLED CHILD
HYPERACTIVE CHILDREN AND THE PIANO
BRAIN HEMISPHERE COORDINATION AND CHILDREN’S PIANO
BRAIN CHEMISTRY AND EMOTIONS IN CHILDREN’S PIANO
BRAINS, CHILDREN AND PIANO
THE PIANIST WITH TWO BRAINS
ENDORPHINS, CHILDREN AND PIANO
WHY KIDS DISLIKE PLAYING WITH THEIR LEFT HAND
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN, PIANO, MUSIC AND MATH
EINSTEIN’S PIANO
EINSTEIN’S VIOLIN IMPROVISATIONS IN GYPSY STYLE
PIANO BRAIN CHEMISTRY FOR KIDS
BRAIN HEMISPHERES AND KID’S PIANO
MATH, PIANO AND KIDS
NEUROTRANSMITTERS, CHILDREN AND PIANO
BRAIN STRUCTURE AND KID’S PIANO
The basic piano curriculum is a set group of skills that is determined by the method, usually, reading music. But there are other ways to engage a child. What must a child learn in order to have mastered the “rudiments” of piano, regardless of methodology or approach? The following list is not dependent on any time period.
Every child will take a different amount of time to absorb these subjects. If you put a time limit on it, as most piano teachers do, you will have set your students up for an impossible task.
A child should be confident enough to read the first five notes above Middle C with their right hand in any simple piano book, even if they have never seen that particular book. In Piano By Number that is 1 2 3 4 5.
Learn to read these five notes first, and hopefully get the child to use proper fingering, but fingering comes after note recognition.
Above you’ll see the tools a child is given to start reading music in conventional lessons. It is extremely confusing. Notice the five horizontal lines above (the page) and below the entirely different graphic system of the piano keyboard.
Kids are expected to instantly see the relationship between two completely different graphic systems, the five lines, and the keyboard.
Now look below and find a numbered keyboard, which is immediately understandable to any child who can count. Try a song on the online piano below:
There are six chords that I insist on: C, F, G, D, E and A. I allow them to play two note chords, that is, the bottom two notes of any triad (a "triad" is the most basic form of any three note chord). This alleviates fingering problems. It also gets them to concentrate on the essential visual fact: what do chords look like on the keyboard?
It is better to have them looking at the pattern of the keys than to be worrying about which finger goes where in the chord. Thus I allow two note chords, for it is simple to then eventually add a third note to what they already know. They always use the 2nd and 3rd fingers (index and middle.)
They must memorize a song with both hands and play it all the way through. You will have to find a song they really like, because they will have to repeat the song a million times to get it right. It doesn’t matter how long they take. It’s not a race. You’re trying to give them a “calling card” so they can proudly let people know that “I play piano.” This has nothing to do with Carnegie Hall, but with how the child feels about playing the piano.
Be able to play and count simple exercises that develop a sense of acting within time limits. See the piano game called FOURS. Reading rhythms in sheet music is one of the most difficult tasks you will ever perform, even for musicians.
Don’t expect kids to understand more than the barest outlines of these complexities. If a child can identify a quarter note, a half note and a whole note, you are on the right track. A better tactic is to get the child to speak or say the rhythm. It’s a known fact among musicians that “if you can say it, you can play it.”
Some children learn this list in a month, and others take years. Your job is to make the kids who take years enjoy the process. Until you accomplish this list, you haven’t really even begun to learn the piano. Most piano teachers rush ahead to cover more ground, but I go patiently over the above subjects again and again, always making a game out of the repetition.
Better to lay the foundation solidly, at the child’s pace, than to rush ahead to prove you’re a great teacher!
Preschool
How Do I Teach My Preschooler Piano?
Preschool Piano Worksheets
Toddler and Preschool Piano Books
Preschool Piano Activities
Preschool Piano Lesson Plans
Kids Piano In The Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom
Piano For The Very Young
The Best Preschool Piano Method
What Is The Best Age To Start Piano?
Are My Kids Ready For Piano?
Is Preschool The Best Age To Start Piano?
Teaching Preschool Piano Visually
A Visual Approach To Children’s Piano
Preschool Piano Games
Piano For Babies
Best Age To Start Piano
Visual Preschool Piano
Start Kids With The White Keys
What Age Should You Start Piano?
Evaluating Preschool Piano Methods
Preschool Piano Roadmap
How To Develop Interest In The Piano
Beginner Piano Books for Kids
Piano Letters
Piano Music Numbers
Piano Key Numbers
Preschool Piano Lessons Near Me
Preschool Piano Music
Preschool Piano Sheet Music
Easy Piano Songs for Beginners With Letters
Easy Piano Notes for Popular Songs
Baby Piano
Play Piano By Numbers Books
The teacher is more important than the book. If you don’t think so, you’re in a for a rude surprise. All that matters is the teacher's manner. Kids quit the piano in droves, usually after the first year. Perhaps you’re in that position now, listening to your child’s entreaties.
“Mom! It’s boring, it goes so slow, it’s the same thing over and over.”
I notice that internet searches for “quit piano” rise dramatically after the school year ends. This coincides exactly with the point at which kids start pleading with Mom to quit. There is one reason, in general, why this happens. If you don't match the child's level of interest to the curriculum, the teacher has failed.
A child who is not engaged and interested is almost impossible to teach. Most piano teachers make the mistake of pushing ahead, full steam, regardless of how the child reacts. There’s an alternative approach. Find out exactly what the child can stand, and stay within those boundaries until the child has grown enough with the instrument to be more adventurous.
But most piano teachers won’t listen to such advice. They feel obligated to present curriculum at the traditional rate, to accomplish what they think is a reasonable standard of achievement.
The problem is that this old-school approach completely ignores the child’s reaction. For example, a teacher may think that a child should be able to play a certain piece by a certain point in the lessons. Such achievement seems a reasonable goal to the teacher. Your child, however, is an individual, and learning the piano is an exceptionally personal experience.
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Unless the piano teacher is willing to bend to some degree in order to interest the child, many if not most candidates simply fold up and quit. The teacher is too hard to please.
Who is to say that your child shouldn’t have the chance to explore the piano at a rate that interests them? Would you rather have them race at a rate that satisfies the teacher’s pride of accomplishment? The teacher’s objective should be to interest every child to some degree in the piano, rather than looking for someone to replace Vladimir Horowitz.
It’s not the kid’s piano book that will make a success of piano lessons for your child, it is the teacher who will open the door in a way that can delight and interest your child.
Child’s Point of View
Don't Tell Kids How Hard the Piano Is
Number Sheets For The Piano
The Pillow and the Piano
What The Piano Means To Your Child
A Child’s Point of View
Finding A Child’s Piano Comfort Zone
Why Kids Need Freedom To Learn Piano
A Bill of Rights for Kid’s Piano
How Kids See The Piano
Inside A Kid’s Head During A Piano Lesson
Kids Don’t Care What’s In The Piano Book
Let The Child Appear To Lead The Piano Lesson
What Bores Children In Piano Lessons?
What Kids Like About Piano Lessons
Strict Piano Lessons Don’t Work For Kids
The Piano Is A Child’s Thinking Machine
How A Child Sees The Piano Keyboard
Kids Like Holiday Songs On The Piano
I Want To Learn That Song That Goes…
Follow The Child’s Pace With Piano Lessons
Discipline and Repetition Don’t Work in Kid’s Piano
Every Child Learns Piano Differently
Funny Piano Lessons
Engage Kids With The Piano
How A Child Sees The Piano
What Kids Think In A Piano Lesson
What Is Soft Piano?
Freestyle Kid’s Piano
What Kids Need In Piano Lessons
Piano By The Numbers
Piano With Numbers Keys
If you look at piano from a child’s point of view, you will see something quite different from what parents and teachers see. All that matters is that the child enjoys starting to play the piano, by whatever method.
In addition, the child should be slowly taught how to read music. It is important for the parent or teacher to never allow the child to feel like a failure.
It is important that the child feels good about the piano lessons. It is not how the teacher evaluates the child’s progress in their piano book. An important point to emphasize is that you can only lose the battle of the piano once. Once your child feels defeated, they won’t want to play. If they do, they will do so grudgingly. That’s simply a child’s nature. So how is a teacher or parent to proceed?
Better to lower the bar slightly, sometimes dramatically, and proceed slowly rather than demand too much too soon and deflate the child’s enthusiasm. It takes a creative teacher to do this. Almost all teachers prefer instead to follow page to page in the standard child’s piano book. This rote process bores children, even those who are the most diligent and cooperative.
There are several reasons why piano teachers take this “page to page“ approach. First and foremost, the cause is laziness. It is easier for the teacher to proceed using this “page to page” method. There is no child’s piano book ever made that can compare to a teacher patiently engaging the child on their own level in a magical world called “music.”
If the teacher follows a text alone, there is no room for error. The child either learns what’s on the page in the piano book or is made to feel like a failure. To disobey is to risk the teacher’s disapproval.
But what about the child’s point of view of that same piano lesson that goes from “page to page?” In the child’s mind they are asking, “Why is this so boring? I thought music was this fun stuff that sounded good….” That is a child’s perception of music as we present it to them before piano lessons. Music is fun and we sway and dance and sing to it as toddlers.
Suddenly, you want this same child to make music by reading it off of a page in a conventional child’s piano book. The result is the predictable 90% failure rate for which conventional piano lessons are famous.
You should be glad to see your child happily experimenting. Leave the thoughts of Carnegie Hall and the standards of conventional piano teachers behind. All that matters is that your child enjoys the piano and wants to do it more.
Most people assume kids quit because conventional lessons are too difficult, and that is partly true. The piano is hard for most kids unless you bend over backwards. Get them to take baby steps toward playing. Do not diminishing any natural enthusiasm for music they may have.
Numbers are the first method that a child uses to order their world. Remember “This Little Piggy?” a basic counting game? Were you teaching your child to count to five, or that they had five digits? In either case, consciously or not, you were teaching them numbers, and you were both having fun doing it!
Counting verbally usually comes before letter perception in terms of child development. Numbers are very deeply ingrained in children’s minds, it’s just part of how we grow up.
Child’s Point of View
Don't Tell Kids How Hard the Piano Is
Number Sheets For The Piano
The Pillow and the Piano
What The Piano Means To Your Child
Finding A Child’s Piano Comfort Zone
Why Kids Need Freedom To Learn Piano
A Bill of Rights for Kid’s Piano
How Kids See The Piano
Inside A Kid’s Head During A Piano Lesson
Kids Don’t Care What’s In The Piano Book
Let The Child Appear To Lead The Piano Lesson
What Bores Children In Piano Lessons?
What Kids Like About Piano Lessons
The Teacher Is More Important Than The Book
Strict Piano Lessons Don’t Work For Kids
The Piano Is A Child’s Thinking Machine
How A Child Sees The Piano Keyboard
Kids Like Holiday Songs On The Piano
I Want To Learn That Song That Goes…
Follow The Child’s Pace With Piano Lessons
Discipline and Repetition Don’t Work in Kid’s Piano
Every Child Learns Piano Differently
Funny Piano Lessons
Engage Kids With The Piano
How A Child Sees The Piano
What Kids Think In A Piano Lesson
What Is Soft Piano?
Freestyle Kid’s Piano
What Kids Need In Piano Lessons
Piano By The Numbers
Piano With Numbers Keys
Your child plays the piano with their brains more than their fingers. As a result, all that matters is your child’s experience at the piano. It doesn’t matter what other people think, what others expect. Even what the piano teacher thinks is irrelevant.
What matters is that your child has a chance to experience playing the piano, and enjoys what they are able to do. Even attempting the piano is a success. It is destructive for the child to be forced to live up to anyone’s expectations. There is no “one size fits all.” Only fools and pedants believe in that. It is a success to even attempt the piano.
No one in their right mind expects their child to play at Carnegie Hall. What we’re looking for is hobbyists and aficionados, not piano virtuosi and superstars. Let me assure you that if your child has what it takes to play Carnegie Hall, it will be obvious.
No one in the piano business will miss their cue. The number of children with that in the cards for them are so few, that it is not even a real number. Take all the wildly talented children, divide by 10,000, and then pick one. That one child has a 1% chance of a successful career as a piano soloist. Maybe.
But all children, properly nurtured, have a 100% chance of playing simple songs at the piano, feeling great about it and adding to their general education and intellectual skills. Your child is an individual. Let’s get that individual child to play as well as they can, without stress, without wildly unrealistic expectations.
The point of early childhood music education is not expertise. It is instead an exposure to the intellectual and abstract concepts inherent in music that will help their minds grow. Children’s piano lessons increase mental powers. To demonstrate this, we need to look at the human brain itself. The brain, divided into two sides, controls each hand with the opposite side of the brain.
The left brain controls the right hand, while the right brain controls the left hand. The two sides “speak” to each other via a huge superhighway of nerves and ganglia called the “corpus callosum.”
The reason the piano is so beneficial for children intellectually is that the piano, in having both hands work together in similar ways, forces the brain to use both hemispheres simultaneously. There are very few activities on earth that excite the “corpus callosum” like music and piano. That’s why toddlers dance around when excited by music.
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Your child’s brain is changed as a result of playing the piano. Even attempting the piano has benefits. It is a known medical fact that the “corpus callosum” (that nerve path between the brain’s two sides) of musicians is up to 90% larger than that of people who are not musicians. And starting piano at an early age begins those benefits early in life, giving it the most time to grow.
The saddest part of music education today is that piano lessons are designed to produce candidates for Carnegie Hall. It’s time to let kids be kids and not rob them of the benefits of piano because they don’t fit a teacher’s idea of accomplishment.
REFERENCES:
PIANO BY NUMBER AND DOWN'S SYNDROME
PIANO BOOKS FOR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN
PIANO BY NUMBER FOR A SEVERELY DISABLED CHILD
HYPERACTIVE CHILDREN AND THE PIANO
BRAIN HEMISPHERE COORDINATION AND CHILDREN’S PIANO
BRAIN CHEMISTRY AND EMOTIONS IN CHILDREN’S PIANO
THE PIANIST WITH TWO BRAINS
ENDORPHINS, CHILDREN AND PIANO
WHY KIDS DISLIKE PLAYING WITH THEIR LEFT HAND
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN, PIANO, MUSIC AND MATH
EINSTEIN’S PIANO
EINSTEIN’S VIOLIN IMPROVISATIONS IN GYPSY STYLE
PIANO BRAIN CHEMISTRY FOR KIDS
BRAIN HEMISPHERES AND KID’S PIANO
MATH, PIANO AND KIDS
NEUROTRANSMITTERS, CHILDREN AND PIANO
BRAIN STRUCTURE AND KID’S PIANO