Tiana age 6 first month of learning

Mandabplus3 wrote: Question 1
no, the guess key game was playing up ( AGV antivirus problem) I have since removed it and am running avast now, wow what a difference, all the annoying bits of the program are gone! It works properly now but I am still not sure if the piano has a problem will test it my self today. The keyboard does sit ON the button that changes the sound...
It's a temporary set up that really isn't suitable long term. I have another room in my house to put the piano but need a proper desk first!

I think, it would help, if you visit the piano manufacturer page and ask them directly, why is it happening. Maybe, they would give you good piece of advice.

Question 2
I have two girls Natalya is 8 and she is doing method books and has done two school years of piano lessons. She isnt all that interested in playing soft mozart at the moment but is Very keen on the solfege singing etc. She also loves to help her little brother and sister play softmozart.

It is very good that she is keen to learn the solfeggio! Teaching younger kids also is a big + for her life experience.

This video above is of Tiana who just turned 6 she hasn't started her formal piano lessons yet but will start them in 4 weeks time through school. Can you see a problem? She naturally uses all of her fingers and both of her hands.

I just see that she is trying to keep her hands on certain spot. Usually it happens with most kids, who start learning piano with ‘method books’ and ‘hand position’. Method books – are textbooks in piano learning with artificially created stories and piano pieces that heavily rely on muscle memory and trying to sweeten a pill of putting music theory in front of practice with stories and pictures. Piano pieces in method books are fastening each finger to certain key for beginners – so they will use finger numbers to identify the music notes. They call it ‘hand position’, because they position the hands over different keys.
In Soft Mozart we have also Introductory Songs and some songs for beginners that is constructed like this, but since our program is very visual, kids don’t afraid to lose their ‘spot’ as much and you will see positive improvement in their fine motor skills development very soon.

I was wondering if the guess key game needs her to use her left hand only on the brown notes and right hand only on the higher notes? It only allowed us to hit that low octive to catch the fruit, this could have been an AGV issue though.

She can use one hand at a time – right or left. There are no strict rules, unless you want to make them strict.

Do you have any experience with children learning both methods at once? I am wondering what problems I may encounter, and if I can be more prepared for them.

Amanda, any method that uses Grand Staff is matches with Soft Mozart. It is not ‘method’ – it is just Grand Staff being enlarged and interactive.
You see, for centuries all the music teachers in the world were trying to adjust our perception so we would be able to UNDERSTAND music notation. They created stories and method books, made us cramming and memorizing a lot of staff.
I simply went from different angle: I adjusted GRAND STAFF instead to serve our perception. I made it user friendly and built the gradual changes of it from Elementary to Original.
So, this invention is more traditional then tradition itself, because we already made text in books suitable for different ages and created ABC books.

This morning at 6:15am I was woken to the sound of my kids singing solfeggio! They are playing with the people I made them

Hellene, Tiana IS afraid to loose her place, that is precicely why she has her hands that way. Both my girls are too worried about loosing their place. That's what I was mentioning to Nadia about Isabellas video. She is confident and happy to make a mistake here and there. I have a couple of little perfectionists! I may ask her to use one hand only for guess key game as a way to encourage her to move her hands around and take risks. I am thinking Hannon excersize practice will do the same thing will it not? We did only just get the stickers on so I will see how she goes in the next couple of days.

Mandabplus3 wrote: This morning at 6:15am I was woken to the sound of my kids singing solfeggio! They are playing with the people I made them

Hellene, Tiana IS afraid to loose her place, that is precicely why she has her hands that way. Both my girls are too worried about loosing their place. That's what I was mentioning to Nadia about Isabellas video. She is confident and happy to make a mistake here and there. I have a couple of little perfectionists! I may ask her to use one hand only for guess key game as a way to encourage her to move her hands around and take risks. I am thinking Hannon excersize practice will do the same thing will it not? We did only just get the stickers on so I will see how she goes in the next couple of days.

The more they will use the program the less they will be afraid to lose their place! I am teaching with it for 10 years and can tell you with all the confidence!
In fact, if you will make your own little research, you will find a lot of ‘method book beginners’ or ‘playing by numbers’ having this ‘keeping the spot’ habit and most of the beginners who started with Casio lightening key keyboards and Piano Wizard having the flat palms that is also not a healthy position for the piano players.
Vision is a reason for it. If eyes of the beginners guessing, muscles are tensed. Prodigies ‘SEE’ with their ears. This is why they are so confident with their fine motor skills. Prodigies and (finally) Soft Mozart students.
BTW, did you see this video that explains everything?

thanks for the video. It really does explain everything! I particularly liked the comment about teachers being "live mistake registerers"! I have sat in on one of those teachers lessons! One of my favourite parts of softmozart is that it registers scores to pit yourself against and encourage improvement. As well as clearly showing your mistakes. I love that it is instant feedback and we dont have to spend a week practicing something the wrong way before the teacher fixes the mistake during lesson time!

Tiana has played guess key a few times now each time for 2 mins and scores near 60 each time.
She also is playing hot cross buns, she had each hand seperately at perfect scores and about plus 5. Both hands together she is much slower her last score was 36/37 plus time 40. Interestingly if it is her suggestion to play piano (rather than mine) she always gets a better time. Her accuracy isnt effected just the time it takes her to play each piece.
Yesterday she asked (after watching me do it ) if she could try the horizontal view so I videoed it for you. She is a total character that girl much like the bird