Let's Play Music is intentionally different from traditional piano lessons. It's so different that we don't even label it as a piano program but a three-year complete musicianship program. That might leave pianist parents wondering: Will my child learn proper piano technique in Let's Play Music!? A Piano Dilemma First, a quick reminder that Let's Play Music was created in large part to solve a specific dilemma. We know piano has a star role in early musicianship education (post), but children don't have full development and control of motor function in their hands until about age 8. Should we avoid teaching piano to children until they are 8? But, children are most sensitive to hearing pitches and laying neural foundation for ear training when they are babies. The sensitivity decreases as children age and settle into language and environment. We need to start teaching music as early as possible, and using the right tools. That means playing instruments, and piano is the place to begin. If we put our 4 and 5 year olds on pianos so they can learn what the brains and ears are ready to learn, the fingers will be frustrated. Let's Play music solves the finger-strength-dilemma in two ways. First: we spend a year playing the auto-harp and bells. Students have a whole year to let the brain and ears lay a foundation of how music works, how notes work, how chords work, how rhythm works. Second: when we teach piano technique during years 2-3, we go very light on technique drills. We DO teach technique exercises including relaxation, posture, and several 5-finger drills (technique post) but we can't shake a stick at how a private teacher will train an older student. So, should we avoid teaching piano to children younger than 8? No! We should simply avoid expecting perfect technique from children younger than 8, and instead put our focus on every other aspect of musicianship. (Musicianship) Right now you might be a little sad that there's not much focus on technique. Trust me, the grass is greener on this side. After graduation, most students are less-than-excited that private lessons focus on technique at the expense of time spent on the rest of musicianship skills. Did you know? Presto!, a new course from Making Musicians, teaches students ages 7-11 the same skills as taught in Let's Play Music. The program is heavy on technique training... because the students are ready for it! Why Chords? Little fingers are not super strong. So, does it seem surprising that we ask students to play intervals and chords right away? That's even tougher than playing single-note melodies. What gives? From a musical perspective, chords are the right place to start. Most music that the children know can be harmonized with the I, IV, and V chords. It makes perfect sense that the most effective way to hand them the awesome power of creation and the joy of real music is to show them how to take these chords and make them work! By playing chord harmonizations on the piano and singing along, students experience success and joyful performance from day one. In class, your teacher will sing songs (Old MacDonald, etc.) and have the students decide which chords to play. That's power! That's creation! That's what we teach. So, the tradeoff: Some tiny hands might not be able to manage playing these chords this year. We allow students to play just the root and 5th, or just the root, or other modifications if they have particularly small or weak hands. Nobody is held back for not being able to execute "perfectly" on songs. Her brain learned it. Her ear learned it. She felt inspired. She felt joy. She has the rest of her life for her hand to catch up. We're not overly worried. The Graduate and the Novice
When a private teacher receives an 8-year-old LPM graduate, the teacher should expect the graduate to be advanced in theory, composition, ear-training, reading notation, transcribing, and improvisation. Plus, she knows how to practice at home for 30 minutes each day. Let's Play Music has really paid off! BUT, the graduate is probably equally novice in technique as his peer 8-year-old friend who is beginning piano with no musical background. This presents some interesting challenges to the teacher, which is why we have our connections program, offering free materials to teachers to help them work with our graduates. If you give both students exactly the same assignments for the first year, one of them will be unhappy. At age 8, students are very flexible in their ways. They are only just coming into full dexterity and muscle control. What I'm saying is, if your LPM student has been playing with slightly less-than-perfect technique, there is absolutely nothing permanent or incorrigible about that student. She can still be a competitive pianist when she's 9. Actually, the fact that the 8-year-old has been trying to use and control those muscles has strengthened them even as they were still developing. If your child could not take ice skating lessons until age 5, you wouldn't prevent her from walking and running at age 4. If you want your child to play with perfect form at age 9, be easy on her as she wends her way through LPM. A good private teacher will be so delighted to have a gifted musician that she won't balk at needing to train the fingers and arms to catch up to the amazing mind and ears. Igniting the Passion
Back when my daughter was 3, we joined a class called Storybook Ballet. As we walked down the hall of the studio, I saw older ballet classes doing what I would expect in ballet class: proper technique with everyone lined up seriously. But Storybook class was nothing like that. All of the 3-year-olds enjoyed warm-ups in a circle, then copied the teacher, prancing around the room with pre-ballet moves. They listened to a short storybook; one time it was Little Red Riding Hood. Finally, each day had the best possible ending: dressing up in a new costume and performing some loosely-choreographed moves to act out the story for parents. Storybook Ballet was a huge hit with our family. Obviously, it was age-appropriate. My 3-year-old couldn't tolerate long drills or high expectations. The class did introduce some ballet steps and terms, but mostly it captured the fun and exciting elements of ballet: dressing up, telling stories, creating moves, and performing! The role of storybook class wasn't to drill in technique, the purpose was to ignite the passion for dance. It worked! Dance teachers could have spent time focusing more on getting those babies to do it 'right'. But why? But instead they chose to share the joys of performance in every class. Let's Play Music reminds me of that ballet class sometimes. We show our students how to create music right away with chords. We don't tell them that they need perfect technique and a degree in theory before they start composing. We want them inventing. They're not just executors of music, but creators of it. We let them be silly. It should feel like play.
There will be time later for perfecting technique, but the best time for fanning the flames of passion is now. Students who have an amazing experience in Let's Play Music build up passion and excitement that carries them through the next several years of (potentially boring) technique perfection. So go out there and have fun! Good enough technique is good enough for now. -Gina Weibel, M.S. Let's Play Music teacher
The Itsy Bitsy Spider, also sometimes sung as the Eensy Weensy Spider is a fun way to work on fine motor skills and dexterity in a playful way during Sound Beginnings class. For young children, making fingers move independently and do just what they want can be frustrating and challenging. Like the hero of our song, they'll have to overcome some obstacles and keep trying again and again to get their fingers to climb that spout! Step-by-Step Instructions When we adults demonstrate the spidery finger motions that go along with this song, youngsters are amazed by our dexterity! This website can teach you if you're not a master yet!
Help your toddler by teaching with this washable-marker finger-painting trick, and by breaking actions down step-by-step.
"Hold up both fists like me. Now point to the sky. Keep those fingers up, and let your thumbs come out." This may require some serious thinking, so leave time for figuring it out. "I'm going to add some color dots to your fingers." Put a red dot on one index finger and the opposite thumb. Put a black dot on the other index finger and opposite thumb. "Now make the red dots touch each other. Keep them touching...now make the black dot touch the other black dot." "Keep the black touching, but let the reds come apart....weee...and then rotate them around so they can touch again. Now the black dots come apart...weee. Keep climbing as we sing... it's okay to go slowly!"
Finger Puppet Fun
Here's a spidery finger puppet originally from Lalymom that's just right for Sound Beginnings students. Spiders have eight legs, so the fun comes when four of the legs are actually your kiddo's fingers, dancing and climbing and wiggling just like you'd expect.
Here's a clever time-saving tip for working with craft foam: use a plastic lid and a marker lid to PRESS into the craft foam instead of having to trace the shape.
Materials Needed: Black craft foam Googly Eyes Pipe cleaners (2 black, 1 red) Plastic lid for pressing Marker lid for pressing Scissors, Glue
1. Place the lid on black foam and press down. Use scissors to complete the cutting of the imprinted circle. Press 4 circles (using the marker's lid) for finger holes. Complete cutting with scissors. 2. Use scissors (or a pen) to poke 2 holes on each side for the black pipe cleaners, and feed them through the back. No need to cut them- they should be the right length. 3. Glue on eyes. 4. Poke 2 more holes below the eyes. Fold red pipe cleaner in half and feed through the holes to make the mouth. Now your puppet is ready to wear! As a PIANO teacher, of course I love this particular puppet because I see some opportunity to encourage even more early finger control and dexterity in a fun way. Make a spider for yourself, too, so you and your child can:
* Make your spider jump to the rhythm of the song while we sing (tap all fingers simultaneously on the table) * Make your spider walk slowly (each finger taps one at a time-tricky!) * Make your spider dance really fast (drum your fingers on the table) * Make your spider copy mine (make up some spidery dances- 1,2,1,2 etc.) * Repeat everything with a spider on your other hand And of course...*Let's have our spiders go tickle someone (Daddy, Mommy, Sister, etc.)! Spider Legs Build Strong Fingers
Strengthen fingers in yet another way with this game of adding and removing legs. You create a spider body from foam sheet and googly eyes, and the legs are bag clips. Little hands and fingers get stronger from practice squeezing and controlling those clips. We want to see YOUR cute spiders! Post pictures of any of your spidery crafts in the comments or on our Facebook Page!
Spiders Going Up Up Up
My other favorite spider craft is a little guy from this website that actually goes up and down his string. Your child can make him go up and down as you sing together, visualizing the words of the song in action.
I also like to sing "up up up" (going up a scale in pitch) as the spider climbs up, and "down down down" (decreasing pitch). If you have an older child in the Red Balloons semester of Let's Play Music, she should be really helpful at singing for your spider. Play glissandos on the piano or other instrument, too, to match your busy spider. Materials
One paper plate, painted black by your child Googly eyes One drinking straw String or yarn, beads for the ends Scissors, tape
1. Cut the corrugated section off and save it. So you have one black circle. 2. Trim the round shape to make it into a more spidery figure-8 shape. 2. Cut the corrugated section into 8 pieces and staple them on for legs. (Kids love to do the stapling!) 3. Glue or paint eyes. 4. Flip spidey over and tape down 2 short segments of drinking straw. 5. Thread the yarn through the straws and attach something (bead, broken crayon, whatever) to the bottom. 6. Attach the yarn up high, and as your child pulls the beads apart, the spider climbs. A second climbing spider can be found HERE. Still uses string and beads, but instead of threading through straws, you will punch holes in a cardboard tube. Everyone's got a cardboard tube at home, right?
We want to see YOUR spider in action! Post photos or videos to our Facebook Page! Who Else Can Play? Red Balloon students will show off their major scales ascending and descending, but the rest of the family can help your spider sing, too, with this handy CHORD MAP to print off.
If you have an autoharp at home, of course you'll want to use it, but second and third year students (and parents) can play piano chords to accompany your spidery song, and graduates will even be ready to transpose it to other keys! Wind Down with Storytime
The story of our spider friend is fairly short, but several authors have expanded the story in sing-along picture books. I enjoy the version by Iza Trapani (and her other singable storybooks), because we find out what the spider does in addition to climbing water spouts all day! Find it at your library or Amazon. If your child is interested in spiders, pick up some more nonfiction books from the library to learn amazing facts like: Spiders are covered in water-repellant hairs. That means they don't get wet when water hits them, they can float, many can live underwater for long periods, and...they can climb right back up the waterspout! -Gina Weibel, M.S. Let's Play Music teacher
In the bustling suburbs of Chicago, IL, Let's Play Music is blooming in the studio of veteran teacher, Lindsey Judd. Lindsey currently teaches Sound Beginnings, Let's Play Music, private piano, and voice lessons: not a light load for a mom with a newborn (her 5th child) just arrived in 2014!
I Knew I Would Teach Someday
Let's Play Music students begin our program at age five. That makes perfect sense to Lindsey; that's when she began lessons, too. Even back then, she felt the premonition that she, too, might one day become a music teacher. "I think teaching was 'in me' from the start because all throughout my years of lessons, I took mental notes of what my teachers did: things I loved and things I didn't love. Now I'm finally incorporating all of what I've gleaned." The First Teacher Has Impact Lindsey told me about her first teaching gig. "When I was fifteen, a family at church asked me to teach piano lessons to their two daughters. In one moment I was both honored and terrified! I remember sitting in the school cafeteria at lunchtime, a few hours before our first lesson together, feeling the weight of being the first one to introduce these girls to piano. I knew that as a first teacher, I could shape their entire piano experience." Fortunately that first experience went very well and that first family (with 7 children) kept Lindsey as a teacher for them all. She identified, early on, an important truth we hold dear at Let's Play Music: A child's first experience with music must be fun, playful, and loving. The environment and attitude around the first experience determines much about the many years to follow for a young musician!
Just an example of the fun you might find in Lindsey's class: Baby Natalie made a guest appearance this week, in the role of Bunny as the students played 'Bunny's Birdhouse' on their keyboards.
Give Them Success
Not all of Lindsey's early lessons were so successful. One very young student, petite and adorable, struggled with finger strength. "She wanted to learn to play so badly! Her yearning was tangible. It broke my heart to see her small, weak hands struggle to push the keys, week after week. She eventually stopped lessons because it was too frustrating. Years later, when I found the Let's Play Music curriculum, I remembered this student and wished I could have introduced her to LPM! It would have enabled her passion to flourish without the discouragement from having little fingers. It breaks my heart to think that any child might associate music with disappointment. Let's Play Music was designed for student's to have the maximum positive musical experience, and I'm grateful for it." We Teach Music...and Life Skills Balancing a music studio and five young children isn't easy. Lindsey let me know that Let's Play Music isn't just the job; it's helping her with the mothering! She says, "Teaching the LPM curriculum helped me rediscover the fun, spontaneous side of myself that got a little rundown in motherhood. We now implement LPM methods in our home; for example, we create songs for routines, like our jazzy original tune 'Socks, shoes, coats and here we go!'. I can hum a few notes from this , my kids echo it back, and know what to do."
Lindsey hopes to share this love of music with her students- not just being able to read and perform music, but to use it in daily living, love it, and play with music at every opportunity. She told me, "Our lives have become a musical! We burst into song when we are happy, and again when we're so frustrated that singing seems a better outlet than shouting."
"Making up songs has become our family norm; on one trip home from the store, three children spontaneously starting singing to their crying baby sister to soothe her... in parts! Each separate, spontaneous lullaby was sweet, melodic, and rhythmically interesting, layered on the siblings' sweet voices. The Let's Play Music curriculum isn't just helping these children with pitch and theory, they're also learning coping skills; they're also armed with music as a source of strength to use when life gets tough."
"These memories are the moments I hold on to and come back to when practicing seems hard or teaching lessons feels inconvenient."
Lindsey holds a BFA in Music Dance Theater from Brigham Young University. You can visit her studio website here or her classes in Skokie, IL. It was a great pleasure to get to know her better!
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
First: we spend a year playing the auto-harp and bells. Students have a whole year to let the brain and ears lay a foundation of how music works, how notes work, how chords work, how rhythm works.
