Perhaps you're one of the many parents who decided long ago that piano lessons would be an important part of Junior's eduction. You may have assumed that he would take piano lessons, just like you did (30+ years ago).
But NOW, lucky you, you've been introduced to Let's Play Music! This program helps children get ready for, and transition into, piano lessons as they build musicianship skills. Let's Play Music has been on the scene since 1998, so it's the relatively new kid on the musical pedagogy scene.
So...should you sign up for 3-years of Let's Play Music foundational classes, or find a traditional piano teacher right now? Let's compare!
Note-Reading and Keyboard Technique
When you think of piano lessons, you likely think of learning to read music by looking at notation, and learning to play the music correctly on the piano. These are definitely big parts of taking lessons, and I confirm that private piano teachers have tons of experience, skill, and ideas for helping youngsters master these skills. No doubt that in private lessons, you will get lots of help with this!
So, how does Let's Play Music teach note reading? In a very natural and nurturing way: We begin with exposure to musical notation, then introduce how notes work in relationship to tones (steps, skips). We teach common melodic patterns and relate reading to singing. Students learn white keys and anchor notes when they need them.
Read our 7 Steps for Music Reading Success here.
And what about keyboard technique? Read our post to see that we help little fingers develop strength and form in a progressive way. We will help your kiddo start to develop good piano skills, but be aware that Let's Play Music is not specifically a piano program. If finger dexterity and strength and technique drills are what you're most interested in right now, you'll actually be better served with an instrument-specific teacher!
BUT WAIT! If your child is 4-5 years old, I really really think you have years and years of future lessons to work on technique. Let's Play Music will not teach bad habits or "mess up" your child's technique, but there's something more important you need to worry about for this age group, so read on...
Musicianship
In my earlier post, Are Music Lessons Holding Me Back? I addressed the worrisome problem that some adults experience: they took lessons as a kid, learned to read and play a bit, but still came out after years of work believing that they don't really know anything about music.
One danger that sometimes arises in private lessons is an abundance of focus on notation and executive skills (reading music, accurately playing the music like we just mentioned) and not much balance with skills that are harder to measure: rhythmic, tonal, and creative skills.
How can you become a musician who understands how to jam? A musician who can write songs and re-harmonize songs and transpose songs? A musician who can play but is also "talented" at improvising music?
Dr. Chad West gives some advice for choosing your child's first musical experience. "In classes where a focus is on movement, singing, chanting, listening, and creating, students are developing 'readiness' for music that pays off in the long run. Audiating, matching pitch, and keeping steady time are skills that don't have flashy, quantifiable outcomes to measure right away, but parents and teachers who value these skills see that in the long run, students with these skills bring more meaning to the notation. These students understand and create music, not just read and play music."
Does a traditional piano lesson give a foundation for musicianship through movement, singing, chanting, listening and creating? Let's Play Music sure does! Read a post about what we cover in class.
Playfulness
PLAY is one of the Core Values at Let's Play Music. Fred Rogers summed it up when he stated, "Play is often talked about as if it were relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the 'work' of childhood."
Read the post: We Value Play for four four big reasons play is critical for learning, and how we use play in our curriculum.
Does your traditional piano teacher offer the playful, silly, fun experience that children this age require? Just a heads up: I haven't met a 4-year-old who preferred sitting on a piano bench for 30 minutes over playing silly games for 45 minutes.
One reason private lessons struggle to achieve the environment we're looking for is because they're one-on-one. Research shows that group classes are a big part of creating a playful atmosphere where learning through trials can happen. Read our post to understand why, at this age, children learn best in groups. Let's Play Music has it!
Relationships
Another core value at Let's Play Music is: We Value Relationships. Read the full article to see how classes are built to encourage bonding between parents and children through an enriching, wholesome, and fun experience.
In your first year, you'll attend class with your student every other week. In year two and three, you'll attend about once per month.
You probably already know that with a very young musician, parent involvement is the key factor in making practice happen and helping students succeed. The same would be true with a private teacher, but the difference here will be that you, parent, will have an intimate hands-on participation as your child is learning. You will never wonder what new things she worked on this week, what her favorite songs to play are, or what her challenges are- you will know.
Years from now, your grown child won't focus on exactly which songs she could play at which young age. But the attitudes and feelings developed around her first musical experiences will set the stage for years of hard work to come. We believe that having parents and kids develop happy memories together around music is the way to achieve a true love of music. Let us help you do it.
For most parents, another fantastic bonus in Let's Play Music is learning music theory in a fun way, at an amazing level, and using it with ease right alongside their child. Ever wanted to transpose easily or compose and harmonize your own tunes? You'll get lessons for you as a freebie by attending with your student.
Long-Term Growth
My goal in this article is to convince you that partaking in 3 years of foundational Let's Play Music (you will love these 3 years) is your best way to ensure long-term musical progress. Read our spotlight on Truman Walker, an amazing young musician who started with Let's Play Music.
I don't want you to avoid private piano teachers forever; I actually love them and think you are going to find a fantastic private teacher to help your child soar after LPM graduation. We even have a transition plan, Connections, in place to help you succeed with your private teacher.
Piano teachers will love your child when she comes as a LPM graduate. She'll really be ready to take off with piano-specific teaching, and she'll have tons of musical know-how internalized by then.
For readers with a child who is 3-5, wondering "why should we even bother with music lessons now...isn't he too young?" Please read my post on the many benefits of getting an early start (in an age-appropriate program).
For readers with a child who has aged out of Let's Play Music (children must be 4-5 to enroll), this is a bummer! This specific pathway to musical excellence is currently unavailable, but the great news is that a new program for older beginners (age 6-7) will be rolling out soon, so I will have fewer of you to console.
Whichever route you follow, Let's Play Music classes or private piano lessons now, I honestly believe you've made a great decision to give your child music education in her life. Thanks for being a positive force for something so important!
If you're ready to jump in, find a teacher near you now!
-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher
Let's Play Music is a company that builds, teaches, inspires, and enriches. Based in Mesa, Arizona and started in 1998, we begain with a desire to teach music to children in the best way possible. Today, over 300 teachers across the United States and Canada work with this same passion using the Let's Play Music method.
Our Purpose:
We enrich lives through the power of music.
Vision Statement:
Let's Play Music is the paramount program for developing the complete musician. We incorporate the best of all musical and educational methodologies and discoveries. Let's Play Music provides its teachers, students and families with an enriched experience that holds the power to change lives. We increase confidence, develop talent, enhance intelligence, and bond parent to child by providing an outstanding music educational experience for children, using premium materials and lessons, taught by superbly trained teachers.
Core Values:
The following Core Values shape our daily decisions and define our culture. Click each link to read more about them on this blog.
Our People: Meets Some Students and Teachers
Becky Johnson (Kansas): Children learn through experience
Lindsey Judd (Illinois): The first teacher has impact
Katie Wilson (Virginia): From hating lessons to loving music
Celeste Stott (Montana): How do you teach the Karate Kid?
Jen Ellsworth (Minnesota): Teaching advance theory through play- sneaky!
Kim Seyboldt (Colorado): Let's Play Music in the News
Gina Weibel (recently Wisconsin): Let's Play Music on the News
Lisa and Joanna (Alberta, Canada): More than Just Piano Lessons
Darlayne Coughlin (Middleton, WI): Drumline, Band-leader, and LPM Teacher!
Ann Cue (Madison, WI): Exuberant Grandmother
Maura Brewer (Vancouver, WA): Music time is for loving and learning
Heather Ann Johnson (Pittsburgh, PA): Prepare for music, prepare for life
Melissa Ashby (Hillsboro, OR): This is how music is meant to be taught
Rosalyn Ellsworth (Mapleton, UT): LPM fills a need in my soul
Sara DeVries (Charlotte, NC): High Adventure and Music Class
Bonnie Slaughter (Utah): Making Practice Fun
Becca Smith (Knoxville, TN) :Fulfilled in teaching my children
Brooke Stevenson (Portland, OR): This program does it all!
We know you have choices for your children: what they'll wear, what they'll eat, who they'll spend time with, and what type of education they'll have. The choices are many, but we can help you with one choice today: is Sound Beginnings the right preschool music class for your family? You want to know: how is Sound Beginnings different from other programs out there?
When to Start Music Class?
Much as for learning a language, early exposure catches youngsters during a critical time when they are sensitive and responsive. Babies and toddlers are primed to distinguish pitches and melodies in music and language; hearing them early sets the child up for success speaking the native tongue and success as a musician. Just as every child holds the potential to be fluent in her native tongue, every child is born with the potential to learn to perform and understand her culture's music.
With this in mind, is
it ever too early to give music to a baby? The answer is no! Just as
your baby benefits from hearing you speak to her (the more, the better),
she benefits from hearing music in her environment and hearing you sing
to her.
When music educator, Zoltan Kodaly, was asked about the appropriate time to begin incorporating music education, he declared "nine months before the birth of the child...moreover, nine months before the birth of the mother."
Not only did he endorse exposing babies and children to music, he stressed that everyone (parents included) has a right to learn music, and children need to be raised in a musical family environment. His slogan was, "Let music belong to everyone!"
Let's Play Music
When Let's Play Music was created in 1998, a handful of music programs for young children already existed. LPM Creator, Shelle Soelberg, discovered that by the time her daughter was four and had delightfully enjoyed a few years of early childhood music classes, she was ready for more.
She was ready to learn to read musical notation, memorize themes in classical music, be challenged to sing on pitch, experience more advanced ear-training drills, complete weekly homework assignments, and reliably perform on instruments in class. Her brain was ready to learn more serious music theory! But her fingers were still four years-old.
Private piano lessons lacked the multi-faceted, playful education Soelberg was looking for, and required too much dexterity and sitting still for a four year-old. She strongly felt that children should not be held back from music learning, especially during the age when they are best primed to hear, distinguish, and internalize musical theory concepts, just because their fingers are weak. So she created Let's Play Music.
The minimum age is firmly set at age four, when students can begin to reliably perform, sing, and complete homework, but the program is also specifically designed with the playfulness and attention span of those children in mind. For years, parents were told to go enjoy other experiential music programs, and come back to LPM when their child was four. Families begged for a toddler class, and Soelberg promised that one day a program would emerge.
Sound Beginnings
In 2010, the time was ripe for the creation of Sound Beginnings, a weekly preschool music class for children ages 2-4, with a parent. Unlike LPM, younger siblings and babies are also invited. Below are a few key points about Sound Beginnings:
Begin with the End in Mind: Sound Beginnings was purposefully created years after Let's Play Music. Now that we have a firm grasp on the ear-training drills, the note-reading skills, and the musical concepts that will be taught in LPM, we were able to design a program that sets up for those skills in the toddler class. The first 80 Sound Beginnings teachers, and most still, are also Let's Play Music teachers. That means your teacher knows where we are going with playing rhythms, singing melodies, and identifying intervals- so she can help your toddler start to hear them now. Sound Beginnings is unique because it is taught by teachers with an intimate, long-view awareness of how the skills in class will build up over the next five years. Sound Beginnings is the best program to prepare toddlers for Let's Play Music.
Musical Concepts: We don't skimp on introducing real musical skills and playing with them. Some concepts included are: audiation, staff reading, rhythm, pitch matching, major scale, pentatonic scale, solfege hand shapes, and classical form. Sound Beginnings is unique because we don't hold back on laying foundation for real musical skills.
Play time! Early childhood is a time when children learn about their world through play. A rich musical environment consists of a continuous exposure to new musical elements followed by playful experimentation with these elements. Class time will have lots of moving around and playing games.
Parent bonding: For the 2-4 year-old child, parent involvement is a must. You are the one your child wants to play with, and you are the one she trusts to guide her in music-making. Sound Beginnings classes (and this blog) are a resource for guiding parents in the art of creating a musical environment through play. We'll teach you how to "play music time" with your child. Read our post on the hows and whys of parent involvement.
Folk Songs and Games: Authentic folk music has short form, pentatonic style, and simple, repetitive language. It's simply perfect for providing foundational skills in rhythm and melody while connecting to a common culture. Read more about why we use folk music.
School Readiness: Research indicates that preschool music exposure improves reading and writing skills, not to mention classroom readiness. We will have a singing story time in each class, and you can learn to sing stories, too!
Specific Academic Concepts: Sound Beginnings is unique as a music program because we also include specific academic concepts. Each semester we focus on different academic skills like telling time, counting, the alphabet, colors, manners, planets, and name recognition. Children learn content like this best when it is taught through a song or musical game, so we show you how to teach through song. What specific concepts will you teach your preschooler next?
Fast-Paced: Sound Beginnings covers 13-15 activities per 30 minute class, making it more fast-paced than other programs. Toddlers require much repetition for mastery and practice, so after trying out new games and variations in class, you'll probably have fun repeating them at home throughout the week. We help you build a musical environment that lasts all week long, and give you plenty of ideas.
Workbook: Sound Beginnings uses our unique workbook in class. Several pages are "smart charts" to engage students and teach concepts. Your child will tap along in her workbook while singing the songs, and it works at home, too! Your workbook also has several stick-puppet figures to color and cut out; then you'll use them during our rhymes and songs from class. We recommend a tote bag for carrying your workbook and puppets so they stay neat.
Although your teacher will give weekly home-fun suggestions, homework is not required or graded like in LPM. Some students love coloring and cutting, and others don't.
Digital Downloads: Each semester includes a CD of songs from class and beginning Fall 2016, a digital download of the CD. Songs are easy to sing-along with and include traditional folk songs, classical pieces, and original compositions. We want to make it easy for you to get the songs in a format that works for you in your home.
Instrument Day: Children experience performing in front of a group in their own mini recital and have the pleasure of hearing real instruments on the final day of class. After studying the instruments and their sounds, it's a pleasure to touch and try them. Each semester also includes a take-home small instrument for the student to use during the semester and keep.
Superb Teachers: Our teachers are carefully selected, then trained in person to present our games and activities. Teachers always have a support team and an online community of teachers available for idea-sharing and problem-solving. Networking and support help us improve continuously.
What we Value: Our values are at the core of Sound Beginnings and Let's Play Music, shaping our decisions and attitudes. When you know what we care about, you'll know what to expect here, and have confidence that you're choosing a quality program.
- We play! (and we understand its benefits)
- We embrace the process of learning
- We give consistent effort
- We focus on abundance
- We make the most of our time
- We communicate openly and honestly
- We pursue quality
- We celebrate accomplishment
- We face challenges with optimism
- We purposefully cultivate relationships
Let's Go to Class!
Although there are no prerequisites for Let's Play Music classes, students who spend some time at home or in SB class playing with skills like singing and making rhythms have an easier time meeting the demands of LPM.
Would you like to have a special time each week for bonding and playing with your child, while increasing your knowledge and confidence about creating a musical environment at home? Sound Beginnings classes could be perfect for you!
Find a teacher by searching our database. Many teachers even have a video of their class you can watch, and most teachers welcome you to come visit for a sample class. Semesters begin in Fall and Winter, but teachers may be flexible about adding students, so it doesn't hurt to ask if you can enter even if the semester has begun.
Unlike Let's Play Music, there is no multi-year commitment for Sound Beginnings class. You could try it for a semester and even take a semester off- so there's really no reason NOT to give Sound Beginnings a try. I hope you give it a try and feel inspired to play and sing music with your toddler even more often.
