Should I Enroll Both of My Children?

Hooray! Your kiddo is finally the right age to enroll in Let's Play Music and you are ready to roll.

But WAIT! You have ANOTHER child that is also the right age to enroll. Maybe they are twins. Maybe they are a few years apart. Should they be in the same class? 

Parents' Time Management

Many parents have HUGE success with siblings in the same class. 

In Let's Play Music, parents attend every other week in year one, and once per month in years two and three.  

If you only go through the cycle once, it saves you (parent) tons of effort arranging to attend on parent day and finding childcare for whichever one is not in the class.  For this reason alone, it is often a good idea to purposely plan to enroll in LPM when one child is 6 and the other is 4!

What will parent day be like with multiple kids? Your teacher will always welcome another adult to attend, but if that doesn't work for your family, you'll have one child by each knee when on the floor, and you'll be seated between their two keyboards during keyboard time.  

Don't worry- you will definitely be able to give hugs and high-fives and feedback to both kids. I have seen many parents succeed with two in a class. We will make sure that there is enough of you to share with your crew.

Family Practice

Many families also love having both kids enrolled in the same level because practice time can really be family time.  One mom told me, "During these few years, music is a big focus for all of us in the family, LPM is something we are all invested in, and we are all on the same page. The girls both learn the songs and sing for each other and cheer each other during practice. They both have similar practice assignment, similar chores, similar bedtime. It's easy to go to class together."

When the whole family is excited to do a puppet show together after dinner or a group rhythm game... family time is a fantastic re-creation of music class. So fun!

My Time to Shine

While some families are loving being in class together, there are few reasons you might decide to separate them.

One mom told me that it was very important for her older daughter to have her own thing to shine at without being upstaged by a little sister. She hoped that her younger daughter would be even more excited to take LPM after watching and waiting for a year or two.  "She needs to see that the class is an honor that comes with age, and I don't want her to be competing directly with her sister."

There was another benefit, too. "Because she's the big sister and in LPM, we let her stay up 15 minutes later from bedtime to do her practice. She feels cool because she's a big girl doing serious practice, and her sister looks forward to that someday."

Rates of Learning

If your children (or you) are competitive, having two in the same year can lead to stress.  Children (even of the same age) will learn in slightly different ways and at slightly different rates.  

Your 6 year old will play songs with excellence. During the 2nd and 3rd year, she will be able to play at full speed with both hands, and may even be given extra challenges from the teacher. 

Meanwhile, the child who starts at age 4 will understand the concepts and be able to perform the skills, but may do so a slower speed. During year 2 and 3 she may never reach the highest level of "polish" on songs.  

In Let's Play Music, BOTH OF THESE RESULTS ARE A TOTAL SUCCESS.

We ensure that students understand and love the concepts, but rather than take time to bring every student to the highest level of polish, we spend a set amount of time on each song and skill.

As a parent of two children at different ages, are you prepared to show delight and congratulations and joy at progress by both of them, even if results vary? 

And here is a secret side note... starting ear training as EARLY as possible leads to best results...it's possible the younger sibling becomes better at hearing and identifying intervals, melodic patterns, and chord progressions, even though her older sibling can do the technical parts of making music better! (You, parent, will learn aural skills in class as well, but it will probably take you a LOT longer than your kids to rewire your brain.)

Sibling Personalities

Also consider the personalities of your children.  Will the younger one fall into despair if she cannot keep up with her older sibling? (Note: this is an opportunity for some heart-to-heart conversations about realistic expectations that YOU have and that SHE can have.) If you already know it's going to be a struggle for her... let her wait and do LPM on her own. 

Will your older child lord over her sister, or will she coach her and cheer her on? (Again, be prepared for some parenting! This is a great springboard for coaching her on how to have perspective and be kind.)

Poor Lost Souls

Every year I have a few parents enrolling a student and it turns out that there's an older brother or sister at home who missed out on Let's Play Music, usually because it wasn't available here or they didn't know about me!  (By the way, some areas have PRESTO for ages 7-12.)

YOU, parent, are going to be in class seeing everything that is taught, and YOU are welcome to sing the songs and share the ideas with your older kids at home. Parents are always amazed at what better musicians they become by attending with their child. Now, take that feeling home and share with everyone.  Nobody is a poor lost soul.

The worst case scenario was when one mom told me, "I feel bad enrolling Tommy because I never did this for Johnny." EEK!  

I told her, "As parents we do the best we can for our children with what we have at the time! When you find something amazing, partake as much as you can and share as much as you can. No guilt allowed, because years ago you were ALSO doing the best you could with what you had!"  True, that.

So, WELCOME to Let's Play Music! We are so happy to have your family.

- Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music teacher

Sing it Again: Repetition in Teaching Music

Does your child have a favorite song, bedtime story, or movie he requests over and over? As adults, we are constantly seeking new stimulation, while children often crave just the opposite. 

Repeating activities helps neural pathways develop to create long-term memories. Repetition gives kids a sense of power, accomplishment, and belonging, so it's no surprise they crave repetition.

It's true in music class, too. When we play a new game in music class, there is often some trepidation as everybody wonders how it's going to work. The next time we play, students are more at ease. They know with confidence, "I belong here, I know what happens next, I know what we do in this game, and I am a success in this class."

Layered Repetition
Large doses of learning are squeezed into Let's Play Music classes by layering content. Yes, we may sing the same song for seven classes in a row, but each time, as the students become more proficient, we add new elements.

Students get the repetition they need for mastery and confidence, and teachers have a sneaky way to introduce new material in each and every class.  

Below are some possibilities that your teacher may focus on over the weeks, all within one song. Want to help us get the most from class time? Listen to the music at home so your child is already familiar with the song and lyrics before class...your teacher doesn't want to spend much time on that.

• Notice the lyrics, what do they mean?
• Listen carefully to the melody, can you recognize the common melodic patterns?  Can you play the melody on bells/ keyboard? Can we transcribe the melody?
• Shall we sing the entire song using just solfege and handsigns instead of lyrics? Can we transpose to another key/ multiple keys?
• Focus on the ostinato. Play it on bells/ keyboard while you sing.
• Can you hear the harmony? What chords do you hear? Identify the chord progression.
• Audiate parts of the song.
• Listen to the rhythms, can you identify the bugs? 
• How does this song make you feel, how do you want to move/dance? What words describe the type of sound or style of playing?
• Notice the format of the song- do sections or phrases repeat? How are the sections different?
• etc. 

  
The Rule of Seven

In Marketing, there exists a well-known idea that a prospect must see or hear about a product at least seven times before they'll take action and buy it. The point is, the  ability to generally recognize something is strengthened with multiple encounters.

This is why, in music class, we will also present several songs or games for each concept covered (common melodic pattern, common rhythmic pattern, minor tonality songs, common chord progressions, legato vs. staccato, etc.)  Experiencing each concept in multiple, slightly different musical examples gives students a chance to better recognize and isolate the element.  

Spaced Repetition & Memory
When we learn a new bit of information on Day 0, we all start to forget the information right away. It's a bummer, but that's just how the brain works. Our brains need cues to get the message, "hey, this stuff is worth remembering."  

The forgetting curve looks like an exponential decay curve. 

Each time we review what we know (and start to forget again right away), the decay curve is a little bit flatter.  Each time we can allow longer periods between review, and we can remember just a little bit longer before we start to forget. 

The trick for optimizing learning is to plan repetition of activities and information so that the reviews coincide with the intervals of time when students are starting to forget their facts.  With organized intervals of repetition, we can study smarter, not longer.

That's why we sing a new Let's Play Music song or game in every class, several times, when it is first presented. Then it comes back (less frequently) for us to review and sing.

Remember Every Song
If you want to study smart, try creating your own spaced repetition learning: review pieces of information that you are retaining well less often than pieces that you are not remembering well. 

Here's quick piano example: Choose the piano songs you want to review. How about every song I have memorized. Attempt to play through the songs. Based on how accurately you can remember the song, decide if you will review it again tomorrow, next week, next month, in 4 months, or next year.

As part of your routine, each time you play piano, include some work on a new piece you are trying to memorize and include a play-through, from your schedule of a piece that you already know. If your list is short and you're having fun, you might play more songs than are on your list (playing memorized songs is really fun.)

The importance of the list is to remind you of your songs- if you wait too long, you'll forget what you worked hard to memorize in the first place. 

Remember, the goal is to practice again just as you are about to forget, and that happens at increasing intervals each time.  By making it part of your routine to play through one memorized song (it's fun-you won't mind), you'll retain every song you've ever memorized, forever! 

Have fun!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher  

One More Time: Podcast featuring Let's Play Music

Musician, teacher, and podcast producer, Art Moore, recently hosted Let's Play Music teacher, Kara Olson, on his podcast show for teachers, 'One More Time.'  

After taking Kara's son, a Let's Play Music graduate, as a guitar student, Art noticed musical skills his student had gained from Let's Play Music. Art was curious to know the inner workings of the program - do students like learning solfege? Do students learn to read music? Why the focus on self-accompaniment? and how does LPM consistently turn out musicians who have a complete set of musical skills?

Listen to the complete program here or read the show below:

Art: Tell us what you do and why you're here

Kara: I'm a teacher for Let's Play Music- a music program for kids. I'm nervous because I'd like to be able to adequately express myself and explain this program because it really is a wonderful program for music education for kids.

I was introduced to it about five years ago. I went to a sample class when my oldest was about four. I was really impressed with the curriculum and it looked SO FUN to me. I was thinking of signing my daughter up, but really what I was thinking is "this looks like SO MUCH FUN... I want to teach  this." 

I went to school and graduated in elementary education. I always loved teaching kids and loved music- so this was a perfect program for me to use my love for kids and music, and do this in my own home.

This is a program I teach in my home. It's a three-year curriculum. The foundation is based on proven philosophies and research about the way children learn. It's a comprehensive course that develops a complete musician.  It's not just a piano course or just for singing: it's designed to complete a complete musician.

Art: As you teach kids, you're working with them not only on piano, and voice, and rhythm- it's attacking all of those at once?

Kara: Exactly. One of the biggest fundamentals is using solfege

Art: Which I LOVE. I'm a huge fan of solfege, but I have no idea about how to teach it. I use it in my life all the time. I learned it in college and I use it all the time, but I have no idea how to teach it.

Kara: I learned a little bit about it, but I never solidly learned the hand signs or learned how to use solfege well until I trained for Let's Play Music. Now I'm really seeing how it can benefit kids and help them to visualize and feel pitch relationships.  We do the solfege right from the very beginning.

Art: Can you describe what solfege is? For listeners who don't know?

Kara: Solfege is a teaching method developed by Zoltan Kodaly. He's one of the music masters that Let's Play Music bases their practices on. Solfege is basically using hand signs and syllables for each tone in the major scale. It really helps to develop those pitch relationships and to be able to sing it in tune.

Art: A good example is from the Sound of Music? I listened to that for years and had no idea what that was. When I went to college I finally got it. They really did a good job with that.

Kara: Exactly. I learned the history behind solfege at our teacher's symposium. The syllables were based on a chant. Those syllables have changed a little bit over time.

We use solfege to teach the major scale, and we use the Do Re Mi song... I'll sing it for you. 

Do, a deer, a female deer.  Re, a drop of golden sun. Mi, a name a call myself.

Fa, a long long way to run. Sol, a needle pulling thread. La, a note to follow Sol.

Ti, a drink with jam and bread, and that brings us back to Do.

So, we teach them going up and down. We also include a lot of movement. One of the ways we use solfege in addition to the major scale is in teaching patterns.

We start off in class each week singing the Let's Play Music song:

Let's play music, music, music

Let's play music, here we go...

We're gonna have a good time,

good time, good time,

We're gonna have a good time

Mi Re Do.

I'll show the students the hand signs and they'll mimic. They'll get a feeling for how it feels and how it sounds. We use our bodies, we even have a floor staff they learn to move up the scale with. We'll sing songs that have those melodic patterns in them, like:

Three blind mice, three blind mice...

I'll say, WAIT! What does that sound like? It's Mi-Re-Do.  We use folk songs to teach these melodic patterns. They'll pick them out. They're training their ears and brains to be musicians.

Art: That is brilliant! Especially the part where you identify it in the songs you'll sing throughout the day.

Kara: 'Do' is strong and stable, like the fist shape. We teach them Do is home. We teach perfect pitch and relative pitch. The more we teach solfege, the easier it is to sing in tune and to master relative pitch.

Art: I've noticed with the hand signs, they move up as the scale moves up. It helps me hit those pitches when I'm singing if I move my hands.

Kara: Using my hand signs, really does help you feel where those pitches are.

Art: How do kids react to this? Do they enjoy solfege or doing it grudgingly?

Kara: I think it's a gradual thing. They like it because it's actions. It's a little tricky but I encourage them. When we're singing the first song, we tap to the beat, too, to make the songs fun for them. I feel like they gain a love for it, and later they're able to play the solfege on the tone bells and then on the piano and then how to dictate it later...

Art: That's so cool! What are some other main ideas beyond solfege?

Kara: We also do a lot of movement. Full-body involvement. The move we involve the body, the more children will internalize these concepts. Experience precedes learning, so they don't really realize what they are learning until later when we label and identify it.  So, we are big on doing movement and games to teach concepts. Every song that we teach has a reason behind it. We do a lot of that.

We teach rhythm in a fun way with BUGS. Our chant goes:

I like bugs, every kind of bug I see. I like the big ones and the flat ones and the fuzzy purple flat ones. People think they're yucky, but I just don't agree, no you can't bug me!

BUG, BUG, BUTTERFLY, BUTTERFLY, GRASSHOPPER, GRASSHOPPER

CATERPILLAR, CATERPILLAR, SLUUUUUG!

Art: That's brilliant. An accidental way of learning all those rhythms, to later on be identified for the notes they are. That's brilliant.

Kara: And it really helps them to feel it. We do a lot of games. We feel like rhythm is something that needs to constantly be taught. We have emphasis on steady beat in songs. The first semester of the first year, we focus on steady beat. They listen to a lullaby and feel the steady beat of their heart and the steady beat of the song. Or I'll play a tambourine and say make your feet match the beat of the tambourine. It helps them get an idea of what beat is and then we add in those bugs to develop that rhythm.

Art: So at this point there's no introduction of music notation? Is that correct?

Kara: Notation- so, when we introduce the bugs, we show how the bug has one body and looks like the quarter note- there's a quarter note on the other side of the flashcard. The beetle has two body parts in the picture, and they look very much like the notes they really are (the eighth notes). So that's how they're introduced to rhythmic notation.

For melodic notation, I have a magnetic staff board that I use. We actually sing a song about a red balloon, it goes:

up up up up, up up up up.

And it floated and it floated and I wanted it to come back

down down down down, down down down down.

I caught it!

They see how my balloon magnet goes up the staff and down the staff, like our bodies go up and down. Later we use black magnet notes, and we teach what a baby step or a skip look like.  A baby step is from a line to a space...

Start on a space and you can go just to the next line

Or from a line back to a space is really just as fine

We go line space line space line space line

And we have a song about skips...

From a line to the next line, that's a skip, that's a skip

Or from a space to the next space, that's a skip!

So again, they're feeling it, reading it on the staff, seeing how it works.

Art: So you have songs for EVERYTHING?!

Kara: Yes!

Art: That's, of course, THE BEST way for kids that age to learn things. I still remember little songs my mom taught me. I still remember to this day.

Kara: This really is a great way to internalize the concepts. I feel like they'll remember the songs forever. I have a ten year-old who graduated, and she loved it. And my eight year-old graduated and they still love the songs and those help them with their music training now on piano and guitar. They remember these songs that teach them these concepts.

Another thing Let's Play Music emphasizes is staring a lot younger than when kids would be ready to play a music instrument. They start at age four or five, when their fingers are not ready to play the piano, and they're probably not able to read.  Music learning starts young, I mean, really from birth.

Art: It's almost innate in every person.

Kara: Yeah, it starts when you're born. Or even in the womb.

We take advantage of the music learning window by teaching the younger child and helping them develop those concepts when they are four or five. The next year we introduce them to the keyboard and they actually learn beginning with chords.  They don't learn melody first, they learn to accompany themselves singing by playing chords.

We actually have songs about chords starting in first year. They learn red, blue, and yellow chords. Those are the I, IV, and V chords in music. So, they learn them with colors first and that's a beginning for reading music. They'll learn how they're notated and how the chord shape looks. In third year they'll learn what chords are actually called so when they graduate and go to traditional lessons...

Art: Forget traditional lessons! I don't want traditional any more- I want to do the Let's Play Music method!

Kara: They do this program for three years and then we refer them to music teachers like yourself, and those teachers help them continue to progress. That's why we like to give teachers background on how they've learned music, so teachers can help them go forward.

We have a program called Connections where we connect with music teachers and help them learn how we teach music so that they can our graduates and then they can refer their very young kids to us. We take them for three years and send them back to the teachers.

Art: I wish I had known more about this! I will continue to refer people to you all the time. People ask me "how early do you teach music?"  I'm familiar with the Kodaly method, and I was taking students who were four or five, and we were doing some similar things, but not nearly as well as you guys.  They would eventually grow into their traditional lessons, but I don't think they got nearly as much value as they would have out of Let's Play Music. It's amazing.

Kara: And it's really fun for kids to learn in a group setting. They're with their peers, having fun. It really does make them feel comfortable. It's a great environment for learning music.

Art: Is this program available nationwide?

Kara: Pretty much. It started in Mesa, Arizona. The founder majored in music and she was looking for a music program for her kids. She had in mind what the perfect program would be she wanted for her kids. She found one she really liked, but it didn't have solfege in it. Basically, she developed her own perfect program that she wanted for her kids, and that's where it began. It started with a few teachers and has grown so much. There are lot of teachers in Arizona and here in Utah now. It really is growing fast. The program's only about fourteen years old.

Art: So it's very young, but built on principles that have been around. Kodaly was a prestigious educator of music for children. To see his methods used in a cool way - I get excited about that. How do you find your students do when they transition into regular music lessons?

Kara: I've been teaching for four years. It varies. If they jump right into private lessons right when they are finished with Let's Play Music, they continue to progress and do really well. There are some that may take a break, and sometimes they forget things, and that's natural. I feel like they do have a really strong foundation when they go on to music lessons.

I actually have one of my graduates, he accompanied a song at a church function and that was so exciting for me because we emphasize that- the ability to accompany other musicians, which is not easy to do. And he was able to do that.  I do feel like it's helped them succeed at music lesson and develop more skills that just piano.

Even now, I have come across pianists that don't have the best sense of rhythm or can't lead music. There are a lot of skills that you don't necessarily learn...

Art: There are skills that every musician should learn at some point, but not everybody has them for some reason or another.

Kara: And being able to sing and sight-sing, those are great skills.

Art: I also teach brass instruments. I find that being able to sight-sing greatly improves their ability to hit pitches. In college my instructors says that every tuba player should be an opera singer and every opera singer should be a tuba player! Hilarious, but the principle there is true. If you can sing it, you will be better be able to play it on your instrument. Especially instruments that require that tuning by ear.

The solfege and sight-singing just become very important at that point. Very cool.

So, just a couple more questions. Tell me more about accompaniment and how you introduce that to kids.

Kara: Well, we start off with that in the first semester. We use an autoharp in class.  We sing:

This is the Red chord, Blue is next I said, Yellow is the chord that leads us back to Red.

So we're teaching those chords and we're teaching their function. Red is stable and dominant. Students are learning how chords progress.  Later on, they play these on the piano, and then they learn how to improvise using chords.  They have to figure out which chords sound good with that song as they sing it.  So, they have to develop that ability to harmonize and improvise.

Art: So, playing by ear. That's a skill that is hard to teach.

Kara: In the second year they're doing more accompaniment with piano. In the first year they're doing that with the harp. We have several songs with chord maps they read to know which chord to play. The autoharp is really easy because they just push a button and play. In the second year, they play those simple chords and learn to feel those shapes well, and they're able to transpose easily.

Later they'll add the right hand and add melody to it, but in the beginning it's just playing chords and singing. In the recital we sing and they all accompany the kids while we sing our songs.

The songs we do have those three chords. They read them and play them and they sing along while they are practice so they are accompanying themselves.

Art: That would help with timing as well. That's amazing. That's a different kind of focus. So many times we focus on melody and the accompaniment part just never comes together. Once I taught a girl, about age sixteen, about inversions, and she just about went crazy. I can do that!? 

Well, this has been the best half hour. I've been wanting to talk to you about your program for a long time. I do teach your son guitar and I see this training come through.  Where do we go to find out more and find teachers in our area?

Kara: The website is www.letsplaymusicsite.com.  And when you get to the website there's a box for finding a teacher in your area. A bunch of teachers will pop up, hopefully. You can see what their schedules are. You can contact them. You can watch videos of music class.

There's another program, not required, but like a preparation for Let's Play Music. It's called Sound Beginnings and it's for kids ages 2-4 and younger siblings. It's giving them even more music exposure. We do a lot of preschool concepts through song. They learn colors and numbers and nursery rhymes. A lot of games and activities. They'll listen to classical music and do actions and dance around. It's really a lot of fun and it's really a good introductory course. I do a little solfege with them and they'll do a little bit of rhythm and instrument recognition. So that one is also on the website.

Art: I teach a lot of adults and older teenagers who are just staring out. While they can develop and grow and have amazing musical lives, there's something great about starting so young and seeing that progression in kids. It's worth the time and effort to find the right program for that. 

Kara Olson is a Let's Play Music and Sound Beginnings teacher in South Jordan, Utah. You can find out more about her classes by searching here.