Francisco, age 6, USA

Hello, Julie!
Thank you for your report.
Let me take a closer look and help you with answering to your questions:

JulieRamirez wrote: Hello,
Francisco is 6 years old. He has never played the piano before, but he did know where to find the notes on the piano before we started Soft Mozart. He listened to the Little Musician program as a baby and has perfect pitch from that and from us singing solfege to him. He started learning songs with Soft Mozart on August 13, 2020. He is not using the finger guides. So far he has learned a few songs. I am putting his last scores on them. He has memorized most of them, the last few he is still working on.
Ten Little Indians: P1 40/40 7 40/40 12
The Mulberry Bush P136/36 10 33/36 6
Tom Tom the Piper's Son P1 26/30 15 30/30 9

It seems like your son is doing excellent job reading and memorizing these pieces. The perfect score and low time 'temperature' are showing that he is doing wonderfully.

Please, keep in mind that these are piano pieces from the Primer level. In my method I recommend to work on sight-reading using that level. It means that the pieces have to played on visual presentations with NO pictures and the approach in reading them is different.

Short article about this is placed here

Hot Cross Buns P1 37/37 6 37/37 5

This piano piece as well as all others from Introductory songs is more challenging for your child's coordination. Francisco is doing marvelous job and his score is absolutely great!

Please, start hiding the music notes and sk him to play RH, LH and PH

If the PH is perfect, move on to the TEACHING VIDEOS, where he can play simultaneously with the video with and with no metronome.

www.softmozart.com/forum/55-teaching-vid...roductory-songs.html

[/quote]
The Farmer in the Dell P1 31/33 10 28/33 9
Surprise Symphony P1 67/67 25 66/67 25
Bridal Chorus P1 38/38 20 36/38 18
Turkish March P1 70/71 31 71/71 18
Mary Had a Little Lamb P1 60/63 36 58/63 10
Humpty Dumpty P1 43/43 15 39/43 25
Little Dog Gone P1 45/63 52 48/63 47
Minute in G P1 65/65 23 60/65 28
Merry Widow Waltz P1 43/45 11 45/45 14
Ode to Joy P1 86/88 31 87/88 34
William Tell Overture P1 113/113 38 112/113 38
Polovetzian Dance P1 119/119 85 118/119 72 [/quote]

I am very impressed with your son's repertoire and scores. It seems like he is going to be a star of our "Butterfly Ball"!

He started playing the games, but we have not done it for about a month. We will start again. Last Guess Key Score: 566 time: 2:41 Fruit Lines 297 points, time 10:00 Level 24
Note Duration 68 points, 9:12 Level 3

I think you need to follow our lesson plans Prep C. Following the structure is very important to use my system tin the most effective way.

Here is the link to the lesson plans

I have a question. Once Francisco can play a song with few mistakes and has it memorized, he wants to move on to a new song. How fast should we be moving on to new songs? Do we have to get the times lower? I don't think he can get them all close to 0 because his fingers are not so fast yet, they are still a little clumsy and he is a little young. And I think that would discourage him. But should we be trying to perfect a few and get them close to 0?

Only a machine can do 0. We use the measurements for monitoring.
In this short article I described the stages in learning the piano pieces using Gentle piano.

Another question. I was having him start Level C, but I noticed that Level 1 has writing notes on staff and some harder things than level C and I would like him to do those things, but I would like your opinion as to what level he should be doing.

The lesson plans are structured the way, when Prep C is essential for theory. You can take some exercises from the more advanced levels, though. We use present, past and future concept in the method: to repeat the learned, to keep up with present and to get familiar with the future tasks.

We are reading the e-mails from Queen Tonic and trying to learn about the chords. He is working on the caterpillar and black and white cat.

I will add videos from YouTube when I figure out how to do it.

How exciting!

We also have the videos on YouTube with the same exercises. I can't wait to see your videos!

Thank you so much,
Julie [/quote]

We inserted these lovely pictures into the post for making the text more visual. Let me know, if this is ok with you

JulieRamirez wrote: Sorry, one more question. He is very comfortable playing his songs in P1. Sometimes I encourage him to move to P2 or P3 when he know a song well. But should he be working more in P2, or is it fine if he works mainly in P1 right now? Thanks

If you move him from 1 to 2, he will pretend reading notes and rather play by memory.

We use different approach:

There are piano pieces for coordination challenges: when the muscles are facing difficulties, we need to give the break for the eye-sight. Therefore, use 1 and 3 with such piano pieces at the beginning

Easy for coordination piano pieces (1 line piano songs) are for sight-reading. Therefore use 2, 4, 5 and 6

Hope, my suggestions make sense!

JulieRamirez wrote: Dear Hellene,
Thank you so much for answering my questions and for the links to the videos and articles. I really appreciate it. We will only be using the sight reading songs for sight reading now. Francisco has started playing with two of the teaching videos. We will be using the Lesson Plan C for both boys. Here are some videos. If you see something he can improve on, please let me know. Thank you so much.

Hello, Julie!
I see excellent both hands and eye-hand coordination development, excellent fingers' management. Your son plays in a very good tempo and even manage to sing the song and play at the same time.

These are very valuable skills for his attention span development and multi-tasking improvement (not to mention the music ear, piano and memory development)

I think, first we have to place something under your son's feet to give them point of support. Otherwise his position at the instrument is not stable.

It is also very helpful to sing the songs with solfeggio syllables. This exercise greately improves music memory and will be helpful for writing music down.

The rest is good and very impressive.

I am looking forward to watching your videos of hiding notes and playing with TEACHING videos.

Happy learning!