FINALLY Started! Background & Update:Joey Age 31mo

A BIT ABOUT US: www.softmozart.com/forum/2-introduce-you...-from-va-usa--d.html
OUR SOFTMOZART BEGINNINGS: softmozart.com/forum/33-progress-diaries...tejoey-age-31mo.html
THE PROGRESS THREAD BEFORE THIS: softmozart.com/forum/33-progress-diaries...cially-starting.html
WHERE THIS THREAD LEADS: softmozart.com/forum/33-progress-diaries...-joey-age-31-mo.html
OUR JOURNEY TO DATE: softmozart.com/profile/1064-queriquita.html - IN OUR STATUS (hope to update our status with each new progress thread)

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SO!! We've FINALLY STARTED!!

Joey is 31 mo and Kaelie's enthusiastically pounding away at the keyboard at 9 months. I won't consider here officially starting until she's trying to match notes or obviously trying to peck out a song.

The whole family is taking a stab at the piano - yay. Dad joining in has been an unexpected, interesting, and welcomed addition. I hope we all progress nicely!

So, our music BACKGROUND & interest:

KAELIE: randomly & joyfully banging away at the keyboard since christmas/new year's, which has just recently (this past month) been placed at a reachable distance, dramatically increasing her 'playing' time.

JOEY: when Joey was less than a year old, i knew that i wanted him to learn piano (and drums and violin and guitar - and/or any other instrument(s) so long as he shows interest, of course), but i had no clue that programs existed for young children. instead, while at the store with my mother, i came across this b.meowsic cat piano ( encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:A...d_QiGD82hf98xl1v2HYg ). It was the best thing that i could find for a baby at the time, so we got it Of course, i didn't actually spend time 'teaching' him anything on it. i just hoped that by playing with and around it, he'd establish a familiarity and natural joy for it. and while he did initially love banging away on it, he QUICKLY learned to just push the buttons which even more quickly turned the 'joy' i had for it into 'painstaking' meow'ing of the most popular songs. lol. it wasn't so bad, but if it were up to me, it would have NO buttons for beats, melodies, preprogrammed songs, or anything - just the volume and power buttons to allow him to truly build curiosity and interest along with an appreciation for 'making' his own music. i was really hoping that he would figure things out on his own with this, but there was NO way for that with those wonderful buttons that so easily made music for him. anyway, he did take great joy in 'singing' into the accompanying mic and has developed quite a joy for singing, grabbing anything and everything in sight to be used as a mic when the right song presents itself. i'm sure it also helped that he spent some time with my mother watching a series that intro'd musicians singing on mics. so that's that. in addition to this, i also picked up a flexible keyboard ( www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3153156 ) for joey when he was 18 months old with the same goal in mind, and again, the same result lol yes, it too has an annoying song and joey happens to have made it his FAVORITE and loves to play it and dance around. is it even necessary to mention that YES, he's figured out how to get the demo songs up on the keyboard, as well as change the sounds away from grand piano? lol thankfully, he still enjoys playing these keys, too! more to come in the 'update' portion below. oh, and we also have kinderbach ( www.kinderbach.com/ ), which we ordered and received four/five weeks ago and have been diligently playing on avg one lesson/weekday, often more by request. we started out playing during meal times, but i've found it best to play in the car when we're on our way somewhere, especially because now i don't chase him around to get his shoes on to leave. instead, he comes to me and asks if he can go to the car and watch dodi lol! more about this too in our updates.

DADDY: daddy has no music background, but has interest in being able to play pieces and show off to his friends. he is VERY competitive and announced his interest a couple weeks ago after returning from a friend's cook-out party where his friend played some 'impressive' piece that he had learned on his recently purchased 'impressive' piano. whatever the inspiration, i'm rolling with it. so, we've sat down a few times and i've shown him a few exercises and we started with a basic right hand only twinkle, twinkle that i plucked away by ear. at the time, we had no programs, no books, no nothing, aside from the keyboard and our fingers. in the past week, while struggling with trying to get softmozart to work, we downloaded synthesia ( www.synthesiagame.com/ ) and LOVE IT!!!! it is a MUST for anyone over, 8 or so! It is free, and the full version, which you can demo with the free version, is only $25 FOREVER, including ALL future upgrades. it is soooo good for us. Daddy LOVES competing against Mommy. it takes but a few minutes to download, i highly recommend (of course, i've only tried softmozart for a day, so *shrug* who knows). i did ask Daddy to try softmozart today too, and his conclusion was the same as mine. going off of initial observation alone, SM seems great for the kids, but we prefer synthesia's setup for us.

MOMMY: grew up with a daddy who played piano, guitar, harmonica and sang frequently, since he was often the life of the party. he couldn't read music, but could pick up just about any instrument, including human bagpipes, as was often the case when i was growing up , and pluck out just about any song after a few tries, if not on the first go. he wanted to be sure that i learned to read music, so when i was 6, they started me on lessons, where i DID learn the basics of playing and reading. times were a bit tough, though, and i wasn't encouraged enough to maintain a disciplined practice schedule, so, inevitably, lessons stopped, especially after my mother tried convincing me to play more by telling me how impressed my instructor was at my 'natural talent', especially because she knew (i would tell her) that i didn't practice except during my lesson. yes, i am one of those 'poor', 'gifted' 'children' who has all those issues that 'gifted' people have. i am just now coming to this conclusion after finally researching it, thanks to the desire to teach my own children AND ensure that they don't fall into the same set of problems. in college i tried to pick up lessons again, but didn't have the personal drive/discipline necessary to see it through. despite the 'desire' to incorporate routine practice back into my life for the past 10+ years, it hasn't happened until now, thanks to my kids. my hope is that through the perceived obligation of continuous postings here and the self-appointed responsibility of teach my kids until a professional will take them on, i'll be forced into keeping up my own practice. wish me luck!!

UPDATES:
KAELIE: since placing the piano within reach, kaelie has been plucking away at the keyboard several times each day to her (and my!) heart's content she loves it and doesn't hold back her bopping, bouncing, and singing. she gets excited to join her brother (who doesn't share in her excitement and asks me to 'move kaelie, please, mommy! move kaelie!' as he pries her fingers away from the keys and shoves her to the side). she is ever persistent, though, and i know will carry music deep and near to her heart.

JOEY: joey is on week 5 of kinderbach and can't get enough - yay! there are a total of 6 discs and we've been playing one lesson each day on average, completing a disc each week, sometimes playing lessons more than once, at his request. we typically do this in the car, so today i put one of our mini keyboards in there to see if that would encourage him to play along with the disc. i did this after playing it at home this weekend, only to have him jump out of his seat on several occasions to run to the keyboard and shriek where dodi lives. i love that this program seems to be working so well for him and that he's really connecting with it! i really feel that the free online trial does it little to no justice and was more than pleasantly surprised by the quality of material covered in the discs, all the more because they really appeal to him. joey was FINALLY able to try softmozart yesterday for the first time. there was so much build up for it that i was a bit disheartened when we tried it and while he seemed interested, was thrown off within the first couple minutes by the spiders. yes, my fault because i told him 'oh no! we don't want the spiders!' and it seemed to startle him lol making him jump back from the keyboard each time stating something like, 'oh! the spiders are gonna get you/me!'. this turned into me then having to convince him to continue to try by letting him use my fingers, or me put his fingers, etc. the point is, it was a brief session and i felt a bit let down. good news: my hope was rekindled today when he asked to play the spiders!! "what? he WANTS to play with the spiders now?? whatever, let's do it!" i thought, and so we did! YAY! first we did ode to joy, and although he maxed the time out at 999 seconds+, since he kept getting up to give me hugs, high fives, grab some juice, chat a bit, etc, he DID get 16 flowers before his father finished the final two notes despite my protest because he wanted to play synthesia lol. i did regain use of the keyboard again, though, at joey's request later on and this time remembered mandablus3's suggestion to try hot cross buns first. (i think i read a post by her to do this!). i've only been doing right hand with joey, but was quite happy that he started and FINISHED hot cross buns in 164 seconds, in spite of his wanderings and pit stops lol, and had 11 flowers! i think i will try to update a google doc with this play stats info. i'm debating about the practicality and functionality of such a doc. what say ye? is this already built into the program?? i am quite relieved that there are at least the 6 songs to choose from in the 'free trial' version, since that's all i have access to now that we've lost our usb key dangle i wound up cutting the solfegio key guides in half and only pasting the top halves of them to the keys - i didn't want the numbers throwing him off, nor did i want them to interfere with the lights, since i like to use them. it was SO cute today listening to joey tell me things like, "carla goes through the door!" (carla the caterpillar is a kinderbach character), or "dodi's in the rain" (again, a kb character), or "felicity is at the farm, mommy!" (you guessed it - kb again). i love how his mind just put this together on its own! as i was putting the stickers on yesterday, i attempted to print out the kb characters, thinking that this would help him, but due to a printing glitch followed by a distraction, it never happened. it seems that i don't need to now, so that's great! i'm looking forward to this journey, even if it turns out that *sigh* we have to buy the program again! as of now, we'll enjoy working our way through the six free songs

DADDY: Daddy has quite a competitive streak coupled by a very persistent personality! he likes to be the best! lol so synthesia (link above) is WONDERFUL for us. even without the competitive nature, this is a fabulous program and i'm so glad we came across it! i can't think of another way to get j to sit and play for 30 minutes on the same piece! lol granted, he hasn't yet committed a piece to memory, and considering that his schedule has only allowed him to sit in front of the piano a few times, for each time he's sat down, he's 'perfected' his playing and reached top scores for at least one song. if he quits now, he's several songs ahead of where he was, so i'm happy with his interest thus far.

MOMMY: for the month of march i've set a goal for 2 new pieces each weekday, using weekends as catch-up. being that thu was the 1st and i didn't have the goal done until this weekend, i'm guessing i'll be using my weekends! lol but i'm quite content with the progress i've made with synthesia so far. we paid for the upgrade because it allows us to label all the keys on the screen, and we have ours set up to include the score, so that we get used to reading music while we play. it comes with over 150 popular midis in a variety of levels and you can sort through them easily, as well as import any midi out there to learn to play. today, i started incorporating softmozart into what i do too, and i love it for practicing singing, both with letters and solfegio. i'm glad that i have both, and would not like to have to pick one over the other, especially considering that each of my favorite guys has their own favorite (okay, joey has no choice, but still lol).

so there you have it. our first 'real' update. sorry for it being so long. i'm guessing from here on out they'll be more condensed, since they won't have the background info

thanks for reading!

FYI: I'm still trying to figure out how best (as far as searchability goes) to update/post our progress.

Also, just wanted to post a quick update about this morning (the above post is from last night).

So, this morning, again, Joey requested to softmozart, adding that he wanted to "give you flowers, mommy!" I think it's great! I think he's finally starting to get it - I love seeing his progress. This morning he finished Ode to Joy BEFORE it timed out lol MUCH better than last night. Again, he was excited about Gracie, Felicity, Dodi and the other kinderbach characters doing their thing while shaking salt, or on the farm, or in the rain lol.

AND, for those of you who are also seseme and/or signingtime people, you'll get a kick out of this morning's ramblings from Joey. They went something like this: "Ohh, yay, felicity, mommy, felicity is on the farm, down on the farm with alex and leah, on the farm with one yellow chicken, yellow like big bird! yay, mommy!"

so, that's our progress.

and somehow, daddy was able to take an extended lunch, so he raced home and is now hogging the keyboard on synthesia, trying to perfect his score. LOL it is SOO funny to see him so animated while competing against himself for 'perfect' scores. of course, he and joey take an occasional break to toss the b-ball into the hoop or pass some hugs, so it's all good.

i'm so glad we are finally on this journey it's been exciting so far and we're only a few days into it.

Congratulation on starting a journey!
When there is a will there is a way!
I am so excited that Joey is enjoying the program!
If you have any questions feel free to PM me, I will be happy to help!
But so far looks like you got it

Nadia, thanks so much! Also, I just found your pm! Thank you for reaching out and sorry that it took me so long to find it. We've all been insanely sick this past week, but it hasn't stopped Joey from requesting "The Spider Game" or ask me if I want flowers lol.

Quick question, which I'm sure I could find somewhere if I searched enough: what's the difference between the red and the purple flowers?

Joey: Still enjoying his "spider game" and asking if I'd like flowers. Today, he started and finished Ode to Joy in less than 400 seconds lol MUCH better than the last couple days. Yesterday, Kaelie accidentally switched from level 1 to 3, which prompted me to check the different levels out, finally. He did well with level 3, so today, half way through, I switched him to 3 (when I remembered), and again he handled it fine. I think I will try to keep it this way. We'll see. It is smaller and he did request afterwards for it to be bigger. I asked him if he was sure and just reset it to 3 and he kept going anyway, so *shrug* who knows. Also, he LOVES him some kinderbach charcters and continues to mention how "Dodi's in the rain" and "Carla's at the door", etc. It's cute. And it's exciting to see how he's really learning music Hearing him sing in solfegio is adorable, even if it's not 100% on pitch! Looking forward to see what this next month has in store for him.

Note - he only really plays once through, if that, while getting up and doing a lot of other things, but after that, the rest of the day he'll only bang out a few notes here and there if we're around. If we leave the house, then returning allows us a fresh start and renewed interest, but really, it's all too soon to truly say what's 'typical' behavior. we're having a good time, though

Kaelie - Still a boppin' and a bangin'. I wonder how old she'll be when she starts really giving it a go. Hmm. If you started your littles under 18 months, please chime in! Thanks

Daddy - still uses synthesia and is progressing nicely and joyfully.

Mommy - has been quite sick and short on time and hasn't quite kept up with her goal of 2 songs/day on synthesia - doh! GOTTA make that happen! I do, however, learn to use the "S" button to play a song through on SM and really enjoy learning to sing in solfegio while encouraging Joey to play. I find that my ear is slowly learning to differentiate what note a sound is. Pretty neat.

Have been dedicating some time to reading through the posts (mostly Nadia's - thank you!) and while I can't YET find the curriculum/1st year lesson plans, I did find the Hanon 1 video () and will try it tomorrow hopefully! Will let you all know how it goes!