I'm Bonnie Slaughter, and I love Let’s Play Music! I love helping children blossom into musicians. I love the excitement on their faces when they discover how patterns they sang about in Red Balloons and Blue Bugs come to life at the keyboard and in notation. Thank you creator, Shelle Soelberg, and the LPM team for all the research and work you continue to put into making this program really special! I have been teaching piano for over 40 years and maintain a studio of around 90 students aged infant to older adult. I would like to share with you a few of my favorite tools for encouraging practicing.
Practice Abacus
The first tool my piano parents love is the Practice Abacus. We all know that repetitions are essential to solid learning and muscle memory. So how do we make it fun? With a colorful, personalized, hands-on tool that children can make themselves! After many trials, I came up with a design that is easy, economical and sturdy. You will need foam board, 3 pipe cleaners and 30 beads. I start with a piece of foam board and cut the board into 5” x 6” pieces.
Punch 6 holes down each short side about 5/8” from the edge.
Push pipe cleaners up through the hole on one side and add 5 beads.
Put the end down through the hole on the opposite side. Bend to go up into the next hole, add beads, and push down into the hole on the opposite end. So one pipe cleaner makes 2 rows. (I know that is pretty confusing instructions, so I show you how to make one on my You Tube channel.)
You could make an abacus with your child as a gift at the beginning of Green Turtles. What a special way to bond and get excited about the new semester! If you'd rather buy one, they can be purchased.
Practice Incentive Games I also created a packet of Practice Incentive Gameboards for you. These seven creative games help make practicing fun! You use them at home with any instrument (or chore!).
When children color these themselves, it increases their ownership in the project, so I highly recommend planning a fun, special 'date' to make a game with your child. Laminate it to make it super-special. You can use the time together to talk up the excitement of the upcoming semester and plan how exciting it will be to use the games.
The student's set includes Musical Land, Football Fun, Practice Piggy, Majestic Music Mountain, Staccato Slalom Maze and Hanging Ornaments.
You and your child are going tomake up your own rules about how to move on the game and what the reward will be when they have finished. Rewards might be a date night with Mom or Dad, an ice cream cone, or money. Decide together, and choose whatever is tickling that child’s fancy that month. (I also have large-sized gameboards for teachers to use in their studios.)
Amazing Parents The most critical tool for student success is parent education and involvment. Nothing your teacher does can replace the role of parents in empowering and motivating your own children! No one knows your children better than you do!
I so wish I had known back when my kids were young what I know now. I have been refining interactions with my piano students over the last few years and have had incredible experiences in making a difference in their lives. It's hard to sum up every tip, but here are some I find important:
Parents, start with identifying why you want your children to study music. Remind yourself regularly. Share it with your children. It will help you stick to your guns. Music study isn't always easy! Don't give up!
Communicate with your child. Demanding that they practice is confusing and contentious, but joyfully sharing your vision with them as you encourage them to practice is fun. Be compassionate about the hard things and the scary things they try. Be excited with them when they succeed.
Remember, LPM is Let’s PLAY music. Play WITH your child. Sing, dance, enjoy the journey. Your attitude during the journey is important. Model it.
One of the most powerful and motivating statements is, “I love hearing you play!” Stop. Just enjoy where they are right now and love them!
Empowering Students All of my students have Declarations: a set of positive affirmations that they created and recite every day at home and at lessons. As part of introducing themselves at our studio recital this last spring, each student stood and firmly stated their Declarations. Many parents commented on how extra-special this recital was.
We all know that when you are waiting for your turn, your mind is focused on what you are going to do next. Imagine the difference between “Oh no, it is almost my turn, and I going to blow it? Will I be able to remember my piece? What if I forget? Will they like it?” compared to “I am an amazing pianist. My family loves to hear me play. I bring joy to people’s lives.”
Our thoughts and words have great power. An inspiring writer I turn to, Dr. Masaru Emoto, has done fascinating research on the power of our words. His book Hidden Messages in Water is a must-read for parents and teachers.
I have found such continuing drive for helping parents that I recorded an audio CD set called Surviving the Music Lesson Rollercoaster: Tools to Help Your Child Excel at Their Instrument and Life. I have a CD for parents and one for teachers. I am currently working on one for students which will feature first hand stories from my students. I am also writing a music camp manual that includes some of these tools along with Magic Formulas for learning. Developing formulas to encourage learning in fun, engaging ways is my way of teaching my students to fish, rather than simply giving them a fish.
For more information on the abacus, practice incentive games or Music Lesson Rollercoaster CDs, check out my website at:
More about Bonnie BONNIE SLAUGHTER, NCTM is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music. She is member of the Idaho and Utah Music Teachers Associations. She has served as President of the Bridgerland and Ogden UMTA Chapters. She has also served on the Utah MTA State Board.
She has published 5 books, including music camps, which she enjoys sharing with music teachers across the country. She has also created Theory Strips, a series of music theory workbooks to help students better understand and apply theory.
She is a member of the Music Educators Marketplace and Music Teacher Store which are internet sites dedicated to products for music teachers.
Bonnie is the founder and director of the Northern Cache Valley Performing Arts Festival which is held in Preston, Idaho each spring for solos and ensembles. The mission of the Festival is to provide adjudication and performance opportunities for students of all musical genres and abilities.
She is now offering classes and personal mentoring to parents and music teachers where they learn tools to empower and motivate their children and students. She is married and has five children and 19 grandchildren.
My barely 5-yo daughter is thrilled to be a Green Turtle student and play songs on the piano like her older siblings. Unlike her brothers who took Let's Play Music years ago, she has tiny, weak (darling!) little fingers. Today I share some ideas for strengthening little fingers with ideas you can do both with and without the keyboard.
The Wisdom of Let's Play Music I am relieved that my daughter has had a year of ear-training, note-reading, vocal-training and harp-playing before being required to demonstrate dexterity and finger strength. Her mind and ear were ready for Red and Blue level theory and exercises, and she soaked them up. It would have been a frustrating waste of time, effort and motivation if she'd been sitting at a piano all year, wishing her fingers could keep up with the amazing pace of her mind! Fingers develop at a slow pace, even for kids with sharp minds, and Let's Play Music planned for it. Strengthening At the Piano I can't say enough good things about the drills assigned by LPM teachers. If your kiddo has weak fingers, never skimp on bubble holding and tapping, individual finger-playing, and kit-kat key pressing! This video shows exactly what bubble-hands could look like: I also have my daughter play the kit-kat song with 2 fingers for the group of 2 (pressing them 4 times before moving on) and 3 fingers on the group of 3. Our goal is to do it with those nice rounded fingers. Strengthening Without A Piano I can't keep her at the piano all day, but luckily there are scores of playful ways to strengthen fingers when we're on-the-go. The dollar store likely has everything you need for games that will strengthen overall grip/flexion, improve individual finger strength, and improve individual finger control and independent movement.
Sponges: Make a game of filling containers (perhaps during bath time) with water by squeezing a soggy sponge into the container. Squeezing strengthens wrist muscles and finger flexors. Bulb Syringe: Maybe you have one of these bulbs left over from when your student was a newborn!? Let her enjoy filling and squeezing the bulb with water at bath time. Ask her to try squeezing with different fingers (only thumb and finger 2? only thumb and finger 3?) Of course every activity is more fun if you fill the bulbs with paint and make it a craft. Spray bottles: Make cool designs on the sidewalk by squirting water on the cement. If squeezing seems easy, try using fewer fingers on the trigger! If you've got good weather, fill spray bottles and squeeze bottles with home-made sidewalk spray paint.
Play-doh: We play "mushy pushy." My daughter holds a ball of dough in her hand and when I say a finger number (or roll a die), she squishes only that finger deep into the dough. There are plenty of play-doh games online to keep your kiddo entertained and squeezing for hours. Stress-balls: We made our own stress ball by putting flour in a balloon. Just to be silly, we sing the "flat little red balloon" song instead of "great big red balloon" while squishing it and strengthening fingers. Finger Exerciser: $6 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a GYM MEMBERSHIP for your fingers. That's what you get when you buy a finger exerciser (available on Amazon.) You can work the whole grip, or each finger individually. Clothespins: Pick up small items using a clothespin as tongs, or clip clothespins around the edge of your Green Turtles songbook. Look online for dozens of clothespin educational games or super-cute animal crafts with opening mouths made from clothespins. Try opening with different combinations of fingers!
Tennis Ball Puppet: Make a puppet by cutting a mouth slit in a tennis ball. It takes a strong grip to squeeze his mouth open (and you can hide small objects in there!) Draw eyes with marker or glue on some googley eyes. I Love You: Teach your child the classic handsign for "I Love You" and flash it to each other every day! The ASL (American Sign Language) alphabet and counting numbers also require finger strength and control to shape little hands. Ask math questions and make a game of only answering with fingers. I hope these ideas help you and your little one strengthen fingers without getting too frustrated in these early weeks at the piano. In no time at all her hands will be stronger and she'll be playing chords and intervals with confidence AND be able to remember those hand positions for life. -Gina Weibel, M.S. Let's Play Music Teacher
I was recently on a 5-hour flight with my four-year-old, and we stayed busy the entire time. I had packed her Memory game and her Let's Play Music tone bells amid other toys and books. Together we invented "Memory Sounds," a way to play the Memory game using tone bells to strengthen both ear-training and memory. If you have a new set of tone bells and are looking for another fun way to put them to use, read on!
Sound Memory What you will need: A Memory game (check your local thrift shop- I got mine for $2), a set of Let's Play Music tone bells, and a curtain or binder or wall to hide the bells from the players/ listeners. Set Up You won't need all of the matching pairs from your Memory game. At most you will need 8 pairs. Set up a divider so your child can't see the bells. Lay your bells from left to right, high to low: this seems backwards to YOU, but your child facing you will hear low sounds on HER LEFT and high sounds on HER RIGHT. Next to each bell, choose two different pictures to represent that sound. Finally, put the matches from all of those pictures into a "draw box".
The first time we played this game, we were in tight quarters on a plane (photos below). I used a blanket draped between our seats as a barrier, and had the bells on my tray. Since it was our first time and I wanted her to get confident with the game, I only used three pairs. If your child struggles with hearing and matching sounds, just use a few pairs, and use tones that are NOT adjacent (not an interval of a second). I used Do, Mi and Sol.
One-Player Game The listener chooses two cards and holds them up so the musician can see them. The musician states the picture and then plays the corresponding bell. "Train...ding! Banana...ding!" If the two sounds match, the player makes a pair. If they don't match, she tries a different combination of pictures. Even when she hasn't made a match, she's practiced identifying if the sounds match! A valuable skill! This game is fun and challenging for ANY family member, even recent Let's Play Music graduates. I was impressed how quickly my 8-year-old LPM-grad made matches. (In the video below, we hadn't yet realized it's best to have the bells laid out high-left to low-right for the musician.)
Multi-Player Game Each player takes a turn picking two pictures and listening to the sounds, hoping for a match. Just like in regular Memory, players can gain advantage by paying attention to the combinations chosen by others. Major Scale Strategy It didn't take my kids long to come up with a helpful strategy! Each time you guess two cards and hear the tones, set the cards on the floor in a line, placing the cards approximately as far apart as the tones sounded, with the higher sound to the right. You'll visually be lining up the tones and helping them find mates. At the end of the game, all of your pairs will be arranged in a Major Scale! Remove the screen/ divider, and you'll be able to check that all of the matches were correct AND they are all in the correct order to make a major scale. I hope you'll have some family fun game time playing this game as the musician or the listener. Just for the record, the white noise on the airplane was so loud that the tinkle of our tone bells could hardly travel more than a few feet: no patrons were harassed in the making of this blog post. -Gina Weibel, M.S. Let's Play Music Parent
Would you like to have more ease, peace, and fun during piano practice time? Would you like music time to go more
smoothly- with less yelling, arguing or bribing? Read on to explore how understanding your child's experience and perspective can give you one tool for welcoming the joy you seek. At the 2013 Let's Play Music symposium, teachers attended a workshop featuring the book The Child Whisperer by Carol Tuttle. Tuttle's goal is to help parents and teachers have ease with children, through honoring the true nature of each child.
The 4 Types
Tuttle identifies 4 Types to be profiled (not personalities, but inherent natures). All children have all types within them, but lead with a dominant one. To get a better pinpoint on which type matches your child, read more in The Child Whisperer or get a glimpse with this brief summary:
Type 1 : fun-loving, social, and spontaneous.
Type 2 : thoughtful, emotional, and in-touch with feelings.
Type 3 : physical, active, energetic, and love challenges.
Type 4 : intellectual, efficient, exact, and analytical.
Type 1: Practice Must be Fun
The fun-loving child wants practice to be FUN. She'll love to pretend she has laser-beam eyes firing at her book, to put fancy stickers on her daily practice chart, to give high-fives at the end of every single song, and to play imaginative games you invent to make practice go by. "At the end of this song, let's do jumping jacks!" Because everything is more fun with a friend, she'll love playing duets with a parent or sibling and performing regularly to any cheering crowd. Although having a daily practice time is always a good idea, this spontaneous child loves to pop in and play a song or two of her choice in short bursts whenever it suits her. She won't mind if you propose a short impromptu play time at the piano randomly during the day, and she'll have more fun with you by her side. When composing time comes, she'll have lots of short ideas and needs to have all of them appreciated and validated before cutting it down to the themes that will become the piece. If you feel your relationship with your Type 1 is strained, it may be a sign you need more laughing, hugging, and cheering. She feels loved by having fun with you and she'll have a long relationship with music if she identifies it as one of her playful outlets.
Type 2: I Know Exactly What to Do
Your Type-2 child is a planner. He can see details and how they add up. At practice time, he'll want to discuss with you exactly how many reps he'll need to do of each drill each day to meet the weekly goal, and he'll care a lot about knowing exactly what the weekly goals are. He'll want to plan out what order he'll do the songs before starting each practice, and have a vision of exactly how long it's going to take him at his own pace. Encourage him and let him know that he will be able to achieve the weekly goals, even when they seem large. He cares about making life flow easily, and will want to be in on the discussion about when the practice time will be happening each day. This sensitive child will like to hear you tell him about your feelings and emotions. "I am happy to see you trying so hard, even though I can tell it is not always easy." "Thank you for singing and snuggling with me in class- I sure do enjoy spending time with you." He will enjoy singing with you or playing duets with you because it gives a sense of connection and bonding. When composing time comes, he will feel most confident if given as many details as possible about what is expected and how the process is going to play out. "Please come next week with four bars of melody and some block chords to harmonize." If your Type 2 child is unhappy in class, he likely wants to talk about his feelings and be understood, without being rushed. Reflect back to him to show that you understood. "Are you feeling nervous because you think it might sound bad the first time?" The great news is that this type of child has the patience to practice and make steady progress.
Type 3: I Can Do This!
Your determined Type-3 child is adventurous and self-motivated once she decides she wants to do this. She loves creating results, and will appreciate if you film her each time she masters a song and put stickers on the pages so you can look back frequently and celebrate her achievements. For the same reason, she'll love to put on mini-recitals with photo documentation. This child will enjoy manageable challenges like striving for a perfect practice record every week, and she'll enjoy sticker charts to show her progress. If she has a hard time getting to practice at the agreed-upon time, it's possibly because she's excited about another pursuit she's equally passionate about in the moment. Show respect for all of her passions, and remind her of what she's accomplished.
When she feels downhearted, reflect with her. "Remember when you could not tie your shoes, but you kept trying, and now you can do it so easily? I think if you stick with this scale, you will be able to do it very soon." Help your child be very aware of the weekly goals. If she is enthusiastic and puts in two hours straight to complete the goals on the first day, it may be fine to let her take a few days off to pursue other passions (but a refresher just before returning to class is a good idea.) This is also the child most likely to request advanced options from the teacher and have the drive to achieve them. Provide her with recordings of various piano music. She may hear a song she loves and let you know, "I MUST learn to play this song!" Get her the sheet music and she will!
Type 4: This is Serious Business
Your analytical child wants respect from you, and enjoys being taken as seriously as another adult.Include him in the discussion of when and how to practice and let him know that his ideas are taken seriously. You may be surprised at his problem-solving. "I think the best way for me to practice without being interrupted by the little kids is if you let me stay up to practice after they are in bed." This Type enjoys perfecting and polishing his songs, so if he is ever frustrated when the group class puts a song away, assure him that he can keep working on it at home. For the same reason, he may get frustrated when his progress is not quick and perfect. Assure him, "It seems you are frustrated that it's taking a long time to learn this part. I think your progress is right on track, and it was expected that this part would be tricky. It's okay to feel frustrated, and it doesn't mean you're not a good pianist." Because he longs for respect, ask before offering too much advice on his work. "I heard a few mistakes in that last song; would you like me to help you notice them, or do you want to keep working on it alone for a bit longer?" Your thoughtful child may easily fall in love with the beautiful mathematics and theory of music as well the satisfaction of playing polished pieces and mastering technique. He is the most likely Type to appreciate knowing the many ways music lessons can affect and improve his brain and school success. He also is the Type who will enjoy knowing the purpose of each activity in class- what theory it is teaching and what skills it helps him practice. If your Type 4 child is not enjoying class, he may feel like he's not being included in designing how to go about learning and practicing. The great news is he'll be able to handle a mature and respectful problem-solving conversation; if you take him seriously he'll love to find the solution for making things work.
Let's Play Music!
Now as you head to class and practice time, keep your child's experience, needs, and perspectives in mind. Many parents are aware that each of their children go about music learning in a slightly different way, often different from how the parents themselves would work through it. Respect your child's nature while guiding him through this wonderful and sensitive period. Let's plant the seeds of love for music and offer a platform for bonding between parent and child. For more ideas, grab your own copy of The Child Whisperer, by Carol Tuttle. -Gina Weibel, M.S. Let's Play Music Teacher
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