Heidi, 5.2 yrs old (Romania)

Yeap, we do practice with the teaching videos and Heidi is a conscious learner, but rithm takes a lot of practice for her.
When we started learning music she had no feeling of what rithm was. Now I can see a big progress and she knows if she is not doing it right...but still it does not come naturally nor easy to her.

But we are determined to work on this and I am so happy we found SM because it is such a fun way to learn and I am sure that by no other we would have come this far. Thanks Soft Mozart!

We finally got to the big day and I am hoping the best for tomorrow.
This is Heidi yesterday playing with the teaching video:


And this is this evening from memory. I am proud of her


As a background check for our wedding piece we read about Felix Mendelssohn and watched the ballet for a A Midsummer Night's Dream which the girls totally loved. When it got to the part where the wedding march is Heidi recognized it and started singing the notes

Now they are very much looking fwd to see another ballet live at the national opera in our town.


During this time while we focused all our music practice on the wedding pieces we had some other fun activities based on the book from the series recommended by Camelia.

Our first reading was the green book (Hannah's choice): Bach and the enchanted organ




We learned that Bach likes baked potatoes with cheese and sourcream so we baked some wedges end enjoyed them. Bach also likes honey and wall nuts which is also one of Heidi's favourites.



His favorite game was to make music using botles filled with water. We tried that but could not get it to work for us so we used glasses instead:



The next thing on our to do list is to go to the catholic dome in our town to see and hear a big pipe organ. My husband and I used to go there for concerts long time ago, when we had a lot more free time .

I also very much recommend these series of books. They are very nice to read and be creative.

And another Bach themed piece, one of our favorites for good music and fun face making:


Have a nice weekend!

Our study piece is Morning Mood.
Here is Heidi playing with teaching video:



And also the piece written by Heidi from memory. (at the bottom another piece from church that she likes that she is trying to discover herself).



Heidi got over being shy to play in public now, mostly after the wedding so she is looking fwd to play in church the newly added pieces we are going to buy this year. It was a wonderful idea to also add a church album. Great work you do Hellene!

Hi Hellene,

so happy to let you know that we got the butterflies and they are wonderful to go with the butterfly room of the girls. We are looking for a large frame to decorate it with the butterflies to mark our work and progress with SM.
Thank you 1000 times!

Hi,

here is a short description of our experience this summer: we practiced all ths songs from sight reading album, first level by playing the whole album during one lesson every song 1-2 times until the time was reasonable, and exercising different levels from 3-5.
Heidi was doing this really great in no time. Hannah as she does most of the things she takes her time and still is easily distracted by everything else, so for her it took more than 30mins and we could not finish the whole album.

Another exercise that we did is the one with Chords for ear training. First 3 lessons we did the C major album and Heidi managed all of the songs even the first time by playing each song with less than 3 mistakes in tops 3 tries, except for one song that always troubled her: Poppies. She needed more tries and had more mistakes with this song, also in different keys.
After mastering C major with just one try for each song we also practiced G major chords and F major chords. We had a try for minor chords, but it seemed a lot more difficult.
Heidi says she invented a new game using these albums: she start the song by pressing "S" and she plays it left hand without looking at the same pace together with the computer....this shows that her time is good

This is not much activity on our side since we were also away from home quite a few weeks without a computer, phone, piano nor internet connection.

Next week the girls will be with their grandparents and they will be doing the solfegio exercise with the flashcards and videos.

Looking fwd to september starting a new school year. Happy vacation till than!