2-year old E - SM and an active toddler!

OK, so having grown so quickly hugely excited and enthusiastic about soft mozart (SM) I could not wait to start teaching my DD age 2 years and 8 months. However, this is not proving to be a particularly straightforward or easy process (Hellene - I'm very pleased to hear that you enjoy a challenge!!!)

Some background about E: She is a very active and energetic girl who is full of joie de vivre and energy. She has great gross motor skills and does well with physical activities and is fairly coordinated for her age (we do swimming, gymnastics and a music / dance class, riding a balance bike etc and she loves them all). She also is quite emotional - full of highs and lows. She is not a particularly patient person (neither am I!) and if she can't do something immediately then tends to get very frustrated and throws it away. This is particularly evident with fine motor skills - she does not particularly enjoy jigsaws or puzzles.

E does not really like being told how to do something - she likes to make up her own rules. For example, she has just decided two days ago that she would like to effectively potty train herself. Having refused to go anywhere near a potty up until now, she has all of a sudden been dry for 3 days with only one accident!

So SM progress to date - we have tried a number of different activities:

1. Powerpoint / LR flashcards (do to do): she enjoyed these initially but now says "don't want this one" when I pull up on computer. Maybe because she knows it already - so might help when we have some different orders etc.

2. Do to Do A4 flashcard 'hopskotch' - she enjoys jumping from card to card along with the music. Will continue to try this (but not great for my back! )

3. Putting flashcards in order. I have tried to get her to do this with occasional success but not a great deal of enthusiasm. She does not really like flashcards for reading either - prefers to use the laptop. I will try sellotaping the cards to a piece of string so that they form a long snake with some that can be hidden and then turned back over (stops her throwing them!).

4. I often count whilst brushing teeth and have tried 'counting' with music but she's not keen ("No mummy! Counting properly!") She's currently also not allowing me to count in French or Spanish either! Tomorrow will try this walking up and down the stairs.

5. Watching me play gentle piano and games. Today E did allow me to play some of the songs from the introductory album plus 1 minute of guess key. She came over once or twice to bash the keys but didn't want to watch. However, this is an improvement as last few days she has not really wanted me to play at all and tried to find ways to stop me (e.g. putting herself into dangerous situations....!)

6. Playing guess key - well we have had a few attempts at the 'Spider game' but she's not very enthused. The best score we've had is 5 - but mostly she refuses to look at the screen or just bashes with both hands. Last time I tried to reward with stickers and chocolate buttons but even these did not work - she actually refused chocolate!

7. Gentle piano - just trying R hand only but again this is a bit of a struggle. She has played HCB a few times and our best score was 13/15 t78. This was a few days ago on 2nd January but enthusiasm has waned since then. On the 3rd we did HCB 9/15 86 and this included a longish section playing with her feet

I have tried the first half of JB to see if she prefers but not really. She seems a bit overwhelmed by all the stimulation and today refused to play anything at all and would not look at the computer either. I tried the offer of "would you like to play the piano or go straight to bed?", she looked me in the eye and said "Straight to bed"!!

My fear is that I will create a dislike of music and piano if I keep asking her to try and she doesn't want to - or maybe she just needs to keep trying without criticism if things don't go well - I am just not sure what the best thing is to do. For example with teaching her to read, I had to be super-patient and it is only recently that she's giving me any sign that she's picking it up (suddenly is able to learn a number of quite complex words each week). It is a little demoralising but I want to put her happiness and love of music before everything else.

So, any advice greatly appreciated as I feel quite stuck. Sorry it is such an essay.

Lee,

Do not feel discouraged!

My DD is exactly like you discribed yours, only thing different is that she likes puzzles

Be patient! She has 100 or more years in front of her to play the piano!
Do not rush!

I would suggest that you start with very little steps:

GPiano: ask her to play and sing 3-5 notes, Praise! Reward! Done!
tomorrow add 1-2 more notes, exactly the same way...

GtK game ask her to catch 2-3 fruits, Praise! Reward! Done!
tomorrow add 1-2 more fruits, exactly the same way...

Solfege: ask her to name and sing the images (2-3) so she will not get bored.

I will reread your post tonight and hopefully will come out with more suggestions!

Manda!

Posting solfege cards
Grab a box and cut a slot like a mail box. Decorate it in music stickers, paper and paint. Have your princess mail the flash cards in order and in reverse order. Hand them to her in order to start with, then have her choose from two which is next, them eventually she will know which one to choose. Tell her it's a singing mail box and she needs to sing the notes to post them.( you could stick a plastic ear on the box ) you can use this starting at Do then later starting at Re etc.
Hanging the washing
Hang a string under your clothes line( I assume you have one otherwise hang it inside) laminate the flash cards, or even better print them onto different shaped clothing items, then while you hang your washing out to dry have your princess hang out her solfege in order. Again the singing as you work is important! Your neighbors will love hearing you sing solfege while doing the washing Make sure it is easy for her to begin with, use big pegs and tell her the order.
Do the dishes
If you wash up by hand ( thank god for dishwashers!) have a separate bowl of water, mark some plastic toy plates and cups with solfege pictures using white board markers. Them have her wash them up in order. This could be done in the bath.
For this age group it's important to get creative and to be a bit repetitive but present the same information in as many different ways as possible. Try chalk outside, water painting on the fence etc.

Those are some AWESOME ideas! Karma To You!

Thank you for the encouragement !

Manda - those are some great ideas and I will get started making some more fun flashcards (am now thinking different coloured cakes....!). Will post a picture once made

you hit the nail on the head with "active and sensitive". That's my girl to a tee! She is really sensitive to making any kind of mistake and gets very upset and angry although the clouds also blow over very quickly too.

I think that E actually does know Do to Do upwards as I have heard her singing it to herself over Christmas! I forgot to mention that we have the app Baby Piano for iPad which I can recommend as it has a solfege setting where it sings the solfege note. Last week she asked to play several times and did so very carefully from Do up to Do and back down again with one finger per key. She just hates being tested or having to follow an external set of rules by playing a fixed piece of music.

I had a complete break from trying yesterday and today we tried again and had a little more success. Being Sunday we had Daddy at home so this was really helpful. He has never learned any music but was happy to get involved learning some piano himself. He played Jingle bells several times and was very enthusiastic and encouraging for E to have a go too. She was not hugely enthusiastic but she did have a short try with both guess key and JB

Guess key: I have a plastic jar full of multi coloured bouncy rubber balls. When playing GK I allowed her to put one ball into a bowl for each correct note. This seemed to help! It slows the game down a lot but I am less worried about scores rather than getting her to try at all. I gave her the ball if she nit the correct note even if too slow to score on the game itself (official score after 1 min 30 was 3 but we had 10 or so balls and stopped whilst still happy so I'm pleased with that as a start. She does not have any trouble finding the correct key. But we will see if she will repeat this tomorrow

After hearing her Dad playing JB she has been singing it a lot today. Later she agreed to try JB R hand sitting on his lap. I only asked her to try the first two phrases (11 notes) and her score was 6. As usual the errors came from her giving up midway and bashing the keyboard but again I was pleased she tried at all so lots of praise for this. Again not sure what will happen tomorrow when no Dad

So for next week I plan to:

1. gently continue as before with guess key and JB or HCB.
2. Make some fun flashcards and play with these
3. Try the posting game (we do have a toy letter box for this!)
4. Get started on the PowerPoint series nice I have the audio files
5. Carry on playing myself - at least I can try to get a head start as no doubt she will be far better than me very quickly once she outs her mind to it (can't wait!!!)