How Individuality Affects Your Approach in Teaching Piano to Three Year Olds
I have really encouraged you to begin music training for children as young as 3 with the Animal Note Method of early music education. Many of you might be wondering how this is possible and what they really do learn.
If you are honest about it, children this age are very curious about their world and love the fun of exploration and investigation. If they are in any preschool situation, they are learning many things and even at home they are learning about colors, shapes, and even beginning to count. They love animals and to hear stories about animals. What they learn at this age is a foundation for future learning, so why not include music in that foundation. A small inexpensive keyboard will do just fine or even a xylophone can be used. You will need the Note Reading for Young Children and a set of the Animal Note/standard note Flash Cards. It is important to invest in both with this age group. They need some variety when you work with them.
As each child is so different, it is important to work with your child’s individuality. I want to tell you about three children in this age group that I am teaching at this time. We’ll start with a little guy who has just turned three. He is the youngest of nine children and all his siblings take lessons, so of course he wants to as well. He is all “boy; ” full of energy and with a strong personality. He is a good boy but just a little immature. His ability to concentrate on one thing is relatively short. Because of this, I work with him for only five to ten minutes–at the end of one of his sibling’s lessons. We are using just the flash cards for him. He recognizes the note and can find it on the key board chart (that comes with every Note Reading Book and sits behind the black keys on the keyboard), follow the key down, and hit it. I found that I can keep his interest better if I make the animal sound when the key is hit. He will do this time and time again to hear that sound. I tell him the word clue with each animal presented and show him the associated standard note, so he becomes comfortable with the story and the standard note. We have played the cat song a couple of times, but I must point at each cat or he hits cat forever. He turned three in July, so I feel we are off to a good start considering his age, personality and point of maturity.
I have a little girl, the youngest of four daughters in a family, who turned three early this year. She loves to make games with the flash cards and play the songs in the Fun Song Book. The timing is not good, but on the songs she knows and loves to play, she does a relatively good job with them. We are slowly working through the Note Reading Book, but it is not as much fun as the Fun Song book. I always do a song in that Note Reading book first before the flash cards. At each lesson, we review the word clues for the animals and look at the standard note on each card before she starts making up her own songs with the cards.
My last young student actually started working with me occasionally when he was two and a half. He is mature for his age and a very settled child. He is actually taking thirty minute lessons now that he is 3 and a half. He works carefully in the Note Reading book and the flash card set. He makes up songs with them and wants me to put words with the tune he has created, then he plays his “new song” and I am suppose to sing the words without any mistakes.
Each of these children are great kids, but different from each other, and each is successfully learning, enjoying what they are doing, and learning music without the stress that can be associated with first learning standard music notation. Your young child can be successful as well; just work with him/her as the individual he/she was created to be.
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