6, 3 years old, US

Here are my son's December credit videos. I posted the Musette video of him already.

The first shows him playing rock group boogie on 3P.



The second showing him playing jingle bells with the notes hidden on level 3 or 4 PH.



Any suggestions about which songs we should work on next? Thanks.

Hi, linzy!

I watched your videos and very pleased with the results that your son made in such a short time! Great job!

It is hard to believe that you had just started recently!

linzy wrote: Here are my son's December credit videos. I posted the Musette video of him already.

The first shows him playing rock group boogie on 3P.

The second showing him playing jingle bells with the notes hidden on level 3 or 4 PH.

Any suggestions about which songs we should work on next? Thanks.

First of all, ask him, if he would like to play these songs with 'Mrs Hellene' (in our TEACHING VIDEOS sections I play the pieces with metronome and without: www.softmozart.com/forum/55-teaching-videos.html ) Playing alone with the video could help to make the songs' flow a little more smooth.

For the next assignment I would recommend you to try NURSERY 1 pieces, such as 'This Old Man', 'Little Dog Gone', 'Hickory Dickory Dock' or something else that he would like.

Are you playing piano exercises before practicing the pieces?

Thanks, Hellene!

Yes he does the chromatic scale and Hannon's stretching exercises as warm up followed by guess the key or note alphabet school for 5 minutes.

We have then been playing Musette on 3 or 4P, Rock group boogie on 3 or 4P and jingle bells which is his current memory project. We also try to do one of the nursery songs as sight reading on either 2 or 4 we do those right hand first and then left and then both.

When you suggest the nursery songs are you recommending he sight read them?

Thanks, Lindsay

Linzy, here is the trick:
we suppose to work in 2 directions:

1. Piano technique. The goal is to play piano pieces smoothly, with steady rhythm and with character. For that it is better to choose presentations 1 and 3, because they have notes names. It is important, because with extra visual support the muscles and fine motor skills are getting developed properly, with no stress.
These pieces should be memorized, practiced with metronome and polished.

2. Sight-reading. For that we use Nursery Primer, Favorite Classics primer on 2 and 4, 5 or 6. Don't hurry to get to 6th asap. Let the child to completely understand the visual connection between lines, spaces and keys. Play such pieces in bulk. Break the task into semi-tasks:
a. set the goal (let's make no more then 5 mistakes in all the pieces of entire Album)
b. start playing R or L, after that P
c. Do not worry about playing artistically. Let's start with simple - make as little mistakes as possible in a minimum time.

I am going to be available again (hopefully from February) for my free Skype lessons. But for now, please, post as many videos as you can. I will try to help you by commenting them.

Linzy, you have wonderful kids! And they're learning pretty fast to play piano :woohoo: Great job!