Friday Post - Preschool Music Lessons - The Music Tree

My daughter is tired of listening to me teach students downstairs while she watches television elsewhere.  She's started asking me for lessons.  So I decided to give them to her.  She's three years old.

Now, that's a crazy age to start music lessons at, and normally I wouldn't start a child at this age.  I'd tell the parents to sign them up for a general music class of mostly just singing and dancing and not a lot of real technical learning.  But this is different, because my daughter lives with me.  I can make the lessons 5 minutes long and teach her whenever she's interested, which may be once or twice a week, or may be once every two weeks.  In between lessons, we do what we always do: sing, clap, dance and listen to an eclectic selection of music.

  As far as learning to play the piano goes, I don't have high expectations and I don't worry about teaching new concepts every time we sit down together. We're learning from The Music Tree, because I always start with The Music Tree.  It's flawed, and it requires a lot of personalized modifications, but it's the best option there is for teaching music to really young students using proper notation.

The first half of the book is all pieces on the black notes. Most pieces only have 2 notes going back and forth.  I give her a sticker every time she finishes playing a song.  I waited a month before we graduated from quarter notes to half notes.  She's starting to play the pieces properly and independently, which makes her so proud.

After 65 pages of kiddie pieces, there are a few final pieces on the grand staff, but getting to that point is not so important.  If my daughter learns to do rhythms, interval reading and ear training, that's enough.  We'll wade around in the beginning of the book until I feel like she's ready for that final step.

The biggest problem with the book is pages like this.  It's definitely a book for teachers because it's way too wordy for the kids.  I find that these big pages with all the extra information, which is supposed to prepare students for more difficult music ahead, don't contain enough practice material and aren't age appropriate.  The accompanying work book is a real waste of time except as a fun colouring book for kids who already understand the concepts.

Furthermore, a three year old can't move their fingers independently, and four year olds aren't much better.  I've had eight year olds who really struggle with good posture and finger independence.  So the idea that they would play hands together at age 4 is pretty presumptuous.

As a book for older kids, "Time To Begin" fails completely.  It's so boring.  Five pages in and a 5 year old is ready to quit.

Halfway through this book I'll probably skip to something else.  Probably Music for Little Mozarts, if only for the colouring and activity books.  I have a giant grand staff mat that I made for group classes long ago, and we'll learn to sight sing with it.  I also have so many great little music books from the thrift store, too, that we can bounce around a fair bit until she's ready to learn to find and play white notes.  That way she doesn't have to progress at all and she can still feel like she's actually playing music from a book like her mama.