Table of Contents

7Your Kickstart Guide to Teaching Piano to Preschoolers

Are you looking to get into teaching piano to preschoolers? In this article, I’m going to give you a quick crash course on what you need to know to get started.

5The Benefits of Preschool Piano Teaching

What are the benefits of teaching piano to preschoolers, both for the teacher and for the student? Why shouldn’t we just wait until they’re older?

11The Ultimate First Piano Lesson for a 5-Year-Old Beginner

There’s so much to think about in a first piano lesson, and this is just one way to do it. There’s no “right” or “wrong” here, but I know it would have helped me when I was starting out.

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195 Quick Brain Breaks for Preschoolers with the Wiggles

If you teach preschoolers you likely already have a few brain breaks up your sleeve. And you are probably always on the lookout for more!

15First Year Goals for a Preschool Piano Student

Many teachers are starting to take on their first preschool piano students. Some are successful, some aren’t, and most just don’t know if they are!

24The Counter-Intuitive Truth about Preschooler Dexterity

As preschool piano lessons gain more and more popularity around the world we need to rethink how we teach technique.

22Why every preschool piano lesson should include improvisation

If there’s one thing all preschoolers have in common it’s that they’re curious. And it’s the curiosity that makes improvisation the most natural fit for preschool piano lessons.

27Ask Countess Von Clavier

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Hello&

Welcome

Preschoolers were the reason I started writing my blog way back when, so there didn't seem a better theme to kick off the first issue of this magazine. Even if you're not teaching preschoolers, I think you can

still get a lot out of this issue. As I've said many times, teaching preschoolers has taught me to be a better teacher for all my students and I think there are lessons here for musicians of all ages.

In this issue we will journey from the very beginning of teaching preschool-aged students and the basics you need to get started, through to specific details such as the best approach to developing dexterity and how to include improvisation in your preschool lessons. This magazine is a great starting point for anyone looking to get into teaching 3–5 year old students. If you need more resources and advice I recommend you check out my book Playful Preschool Piano Teaching, follow along with the Tiny Finger Takeoff or Mini Musicians curricula, or refer to one of the many webinars on this topic in the Video Library.

Have fun and if you've any questions you know where to find me!

The BENEFITS of PRESCHOOL PIANO TEACHING

As preschool piano teaching has increased in popularity in recent years, there are still many who believe it’s a waste of time. In fact,

it’s pretty much impossible for the topic to come up in a discussion without someone saying either:

• They will only teach a preschooler who is ready...and most aren’t ready• They prefer to start students at age 8 because they all end up in the same place by age 10, so isn’t it a waste of parents’ money to start 3 years earlier?

If you’ve come to this page you probably already believe there are benefits of starting students at

preschool-age. But for those that aren’t convinced (you can pass this message on if that’s not you) let’s tackle each of those objections one at a time.

Are preschoolers really “READY” for piano?

Well, here’s where I have to do that annoying thing of answering a question with another question: ready for what?

If we’re asking whether the average 3- to 5-year-old child is ready to sit on a bench for 30 minutes and read pieces from a method book, and then go home and practice the same pieces without much parent

What are the benefits of teaching piano to preschoolers, both for the teacher and for the student? Why shouldn’t we just wait until they’re older?

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support...then NO.

But who’s really “ready” for that, anyhow?

That’s how I started my own piano journey at age 7, so, I supposed we could say I was ready for that approach since I continued...but I also know that I would’ve made faster progress and enjoyed my lessons more if we had played games, improvised and used our imaginations.

So, what does it mean to be ready? Does it just mean that we can get through it? That hardly seems like a good benchmark for great teaching.

I believe that almost all preschoolers are ready for piano lessons, if the lessons are actually designed with them in mind. Preschool piano should include fun and creativity and they should be fast-paced, moving quickly from one activity to the next.

The best part about all of this is that teaching preschoolers will make you a better teacher for all your students. We can all use more fun in our lives, even (and perhaps especially) the adults.

Don’t they all end up in the same place by age 10?

When teachers or parents ask this question, they’re usually actually talking about reading music. To which the answer is: yes, probably. A student who starts at age 5 and one who starts at age 8 could have fairly similar reading levels by age 10.

But this again leads to another question: Does teaching piano just mean teaching students to read music? Is that it?

Gosh, I hope not. I hope we’re also trying to teach rhythm, ear training, musicianship, improvisation, technique...and many more skills besides. It’s these other areas in which our age 5 beginner will be light years ahead of our age 8 beginner by age 10.

Students who start with lessons early are usually better overall musicians and, by their teen years, they have completely fallen in love with music. Surely that’s what we all want, right?

How is this better for us as teachers?

Getting into preschool piano teaching is also great for YOU because 3– to 5-year olds normally get out of school earlier in the day (so you can start and finish teaching earlier) and have less competition for their time.

We all know that the average 8-year-old these days is scheduled in every inch of their waking hours. It can often be hard for them to find a good weekly lesson time and to pin down enough time to practice. Preschoolers are usually a bit freer and that can provide a great balance for your studio.

As mentioned before, teaching preschoolers will also make you a better teacher overall. You will learn to break down concepts into details you didn’t even know existed, and that will teach you so much about the learning process.

I find great satisfaction in seeing a student progress from a mini musician all the way to a confident young performer, and I find that the careful planning needed and the pace to be completely and utterly worth it. I hope you will too.

Does teaching

piano just mean teaching

students to read music?

Is that it?

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Your KICKSTART GUIDE to TEACHING PIANO to PRESCHOOLERS Are you looking to get into teaching piano to preschoolers? In this article, I’m going to

give you a quick crash course on what you need to know to get started.

Of course, it’s hard to cover absolutely everything you need to teach preschool piano successfully in the scope of one

article. If there’s something here that you want to dive into further you can find all you need to know in my book, Playful Preschool Piano Teaching.

Step 1: Choose Between Group and Private

The first decision you’ll need to make is whether to teach group preschool classes or one-on-one lessons…or both. Personally, I see the benefits of both formats for different kids and family circumstances, so I offer a choice in my studio.

Benefits of Private Lessons for Preschoolers

Many piano teachers gravitate instinctively towards the idea of teaching piano to preschoolers in a private or one-on-one format because it seems more familiar. Since most teachers already teach individual lessons to older students, this seems like a gentle and comfortable way into teaching these tiny ones.

But don’t be fooled.

Even if you opt to teach one-on-one preschool lessons, they are not going to be anything like your lessons with older students. Preschoolers are not just miniature 7-year-olds. They are in a completely different developmental stage and need to learn differently.

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There are still benefits of teaching individual lessons for preschoolers, though. If you have a tight teaching space it may not be feasible to fit a group, and you may just prefer to work with one student at a time based on your personality and communication style.

For the preschooler themselves, the benefit is of course the individual attention they will receive. For particularly focussed students and kids with a lot of support at home this can be fantastic.

Benefits of Group Lessons for Preschoolers

My Mini Musicians program is for small groups of 4–8 students and I find this to be a great fit for most preschool-aged students. Group classes lend themselves well to lots of movement, singing and improvisation which is exactly what little kids need.

I don’t require any practice at all from my Mini Musicians students. This works very well for families who want their kiddo to have music in their life but aren’t ready to sit with them during daily practice yet.

Group lessons are also beneficial for you as a business owner as you have the opportunity to make a little bit extra from those classes. (Check back on the blog next week for the release of our group lesson rate calculators to see what you should charge!)

Benefits of Semi-Private Lessons For Preschoolers

There’s one other format you might consider which some people would call a group lesson, but I will refer to it as “semi-private”. What I’m referring to here is any lesson where the students are working at keyboards with headphones on for a large portion of the time.

How the teacher works with the students in

this format will vary, but there will normally be some form of rotation with the teacher working their way around the students or the students moving between stations (one of which is with the teacher).

I don’t call this a true group lesson as I believe group lessons should be about collaboration.

If the students are working with headphones most of the time, then this is essentially supervised independent practice combined with mini-private lessons. While this might work OK for older students, it’s just not realistic for preschool-aged students.

The only benefit I see is that the studio can fit more kids in a class and make more money…and if that’s your primary motivator I think you should be in a different business.

Step 2: Get the Equipment You Need

Even if you’re running group preschool piano classes, you don’t necessarily need a bunch of equipment. There are a few essentials, though, which you might not have needed for your older students.

Adjustable Benches

You 100% need a way to adjust the height of your bench if you’re going to teach lots of young kiddos.

I absolutely love my current bench which is an ‘Andexinger Lift-o-Matic’. I have the super long one which you can find on Thomann. (For those in the US, this one on Amazon looks similar.)

My older bench (which I still use for my digital piano) was the kind that rolls up and down with knobs at the side, like this one on Amazon. These work perfectly well and are absolutely the more

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affordable option, but the hydraulic lift adjusts so much more quickly and easily which I love.

You can of course improvise your own solution

using foam mats or carpet squares or towels if you can’t afford a new bench right now. Please make sure that it is super sturdy and secure. There’s nothing worse than a teeter-tottering bench, especially for a wiggly preschooler!

Footstools And Pedal Extenders

Having somewhere to plant your feet is just as important as being at the right height. (If you don’t believe me, just try playing piano with dangling feet. It is not easy.)

The pedal extender I have is called the ‘A-leg-gro-ped’ (haha, get it?!) and it comes from a UK company. If you’re over the other side of the Atlantic then the one I hear recommended most often is the PE-2 which you can buy here.

I highly recommend investing in a pedal extender once you’re sure you want to teach preschoolers over the long-term. But in the meantime, you can get a simple footstool to keep them grounded.

My favourite for 3 and 4 year olds is the Bolmen from IKEA because it’s nice and high. If you have

storage boxes around that are the right height just flip ’em over and use those. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just steady.

Other Fun Stuff

A set of percussion instruments is a great thing to have on hand for preschool piano lessons. You can pick up a mixed set like these on Amazon or in your local music shop.

Two other things that come in very handy are

Deskbells and Boomwhackers. These provide a great stepping stone towards playing at the piano.

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Step 3: Follow a Preschool Piano Curriculum

One thing’s for certain when you’re teaching preschool students: you need a plan.

Trust me, preschoolers move quickly. If you’re not on the ball with what you’re doing and following a clear structure, they will not wait for you. They will make their own plan…and you don’t want that chaos!

Curricula For Group Preschool Piano

Of course, I’m biased since I have my own group preschool piano curriculum called Mini Musicians.This is designed to be a no- to low-practice plan for the first 2 years of study. It incorporates creativity and games throughout the lessons, requires only one piano and is perfect for groups of 4–8 students.

If Mini Musicians doesn’t sound quite right for your needs, then there are tons of other options out there. Just do your research and make sure you’re

comfortable with any ongoing licensing fees and that it will work out for you financially in the long-run.

Curricula for One-on-One Preschool Piano

There are a few method books out there specifically for preschoolers:

• Dogs and Birds• Wunderkeys• My First Piano Adventures (really for ages 5+)

My preferred approach, however, is to combine Piano Safari with my Tiny Finger Takeoff curriculum.

Piano Safari is not specifically designed for preschoolers. But because of their use of rote pieces and their steadily-paced approach to reading music I find it adapts well and I can slow it down and reinforce concepts as much as I need to with Tiny Finger Takeoff activities.

Get Ready to Move, Sing and Play

No matter what method or curriculum you end up using, promise me one thing, will you? Bring playfulness into all how you teach piano to preschoolers.

Preschool-aged children are meant to move about and have fun. Get them up off the bench using activities like stepping and skipping games and keyboard geography activities and make sure they have creative opportunities by bringing improvisation into your preschool piano lessons.

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The Ultimate FIRST PIANO LESSON for a 5-YEAR-OLD BEGINNER One thing I LOVE about being a piano teacher in 2019 is how much of a global community

we have to draw from. So many teachers are sharing their approaches, observations and methods freely online.

We have access to so much information and combined experience through blogs, Facebook groups, and other online communities. It’s very different from when I started teaching in 2005.

When I started teaching piano, it felt like other teachers had secrets that I didn’t have access to. Maybe they had some greater purpose and plan than I did. Maybe they knew mysterious things that I had no comprehension of.

This was all quite true in a sense. I couldn’t look into other teachers' lessons, let alone the hundreds of studios all over the world that I can peek into these days!

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The Mysterious First Lesson

I’m now a confident teacher with (ever evolving and developing) plans. And I want to share something that I think will help teachers out in what I know to be a sometimes terrifying prospect...

The very first lesson with a new student.

There’s so much to think about in a first piano lesson, and this is just one way to do it. There’s no “right” or “wrong” here, but I know it would have helped me when I was starting out.

For me, there are two important viewpoints to consider...

Perspective 1: What you  want to know

The first side to look at when planning this first lesson or interview is what you want to find out about your new student. The more you know, the better you can plan for the next lessons, and the better you can match books and resources to the student’s personality and learning style.

In the first lesson with a young beginner, there a few key things I want to know.

• How well they can see patterns of keys and navigate the keyboard.• If they have developed any aural pitch awareness.• Whether they match pitch when they sing.• How much control they have over individual fingers.• Whether they have yet developed a sense of pulse and if they can keep a steady beat.

There are definitely more things I’m paying attention to in my first interactions with a child. These are just the key musical abilities that I want to assess. The reason for choosing these particular ones is that they are the most common stumbling blocks for students this age.

As we move forward, I want to be proactive and prepared so that I can put everything in place. That way, when we do reach the hurdle, my student will glide right over it.

Perspective 2: How you want the student to feel

Now, all that said, this isn’t the way we want our new precious student to think of their first piano lesson. It absolutely shouldn’t feel like some kind of assessment or test.

I want this new student to leave with a beaming smile, impatient for the next lesson. Setting off on the right foot can set you up for a wonderful student-teacher relationship for (potentially!) years to come.

So, this is where the delicate balance of masking these little assessments and observations as fun and games comes in.

Aural Skills

The key aural skills I want to find out about with a five year old beginning piano student like this are these basic opposites: loud vs soft, short vs long, same vs different, high vs low.

At five years old, the toughest of these is usually high & low. Especially once you apply that to a

I want this new

student to leave with a beaming

smile, impatient

for the next lesson.

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piano where high=right and low=left. This just boggles the mind of some kids. Others will get it right away.

One of my favourite ways to practice these beginning aural skills are the listening paddles I made a little while back. In the first lesson, we might only get to one of these pairs, or we might do them all.

Follow the child’s lead here. If they look at all concerned or stressed by the exercise, move on!

Singing

Some five year olds can already perfectly match pitch, and some are a long way from doing that yet. I include lots of singing in lessons--it’s a big part of my teaching style--so I want to know right away how much coaching this area is going to require.

It’s usually easier initially to match like with like. Start with getting your new beginner to sing along with your singing, not with the piano.

Two pitches are often enough to start with. I simply use a pattern of so-mi accompanied by the Kirwin hand signs. If I have a natural and enthusiastic singer on my hands, I’ll switch it up between so-mi patterns, and do-low la patterns.

Even if you don’t use a lot of solfa singing in your studio (Wait, why not? ;-) ) I’d still recommend some kind of singing activity. Even singing along with a CD from a method book can tell you so much about a child’s pitch awareness.

Finger Dexterity

This one is BIG at this age. There is a huge variance in finger strength and dexterity among five year olds.

I’ve met five year olds who are still grasping a crayon in a fist instead of a pen grip. Equally, I’ve met some five year olds who have as much control as an average seven year old.

This is why we tap it out. I get them tapping individual fingers on a table or closed piano lid. Call out “finger 2!” and demonstrate tapping this finger independently.

As with everything else here, this needs to be adapted to have a positive experience. Fingers 1 & 2 could be enough for the first day. Or, you might be able to utilise all the fingers, and specify which hand to use.

Keeping the Beat

Do you have a friend that claps along with songs in a sort of haphazard, erratic manner?

Does it drive you bananas?

Me too.

Let’s not inflict this on the next generation. If we catch them at this age, they’ll never become those slightly out-of-time adults we all know and... love... in spite of their clapping style.

We don’t want to confuse fine motor skills with actual sense of pulse either so don’t start with clapping or playing. Get your student marching, jumping, stomping, and playing percussion instruments. Develop and assess the gross motor skills first, and you can go from there.

Navigating the Keyboard

This is really about visual pattern recognition. To find our way around the keyboard we need to see it as a series of black key patterns. Not all five year olds will see this right away.

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To assess and develop this area, I use games, improvisation and rote teaching.

My favourite game for the first lesson is Dogs and Frogs. At later lessons, we’ll cover this more in-depth with other games too.

There are lots of great easy rote pieces around, such as those found in the wonderful Piano Safari and Roadtrip! books.

Improvisation can also help with beginning navigation. Even simple specification such as “Let’s play only white keys” or “Let’s use only three black key groups this time” can prompt exploration and understanding of the keyboard geography.

How might all this look?

Every individual lesson is different and every child is different. However, I think it can be useful to see all this laid out in specific terms. You can  download a sample lesson outline here.

It is not meant to be a prescriptive and exact lesson plan, more of a guideline. I hope it provides you with a starting point and inspiration for your first lesson with a very young beginner. Use it in any way you find helpful!

Want to know where to go from here?

Tiny Finger Takeoff is the perfect resource for you. It's is comprehensive but flexible enough that you can put your own stamp on it and fit the ideas in with the way you teach. Take the Tiny Finger Takeoff course here.

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FIRST YEAR GOALS for a PRESCHOOL PIANO STUDENT

One of the biggest traps I think piano teachers who are new to teaching preschoolers fall into is expecting too

much of them...or too little. One or the other.

I fell into the too much camp. Not because I had lofty goals for my students, but mostly because I was worried what the parents would think.

It’s important to get our own goals right so that we can feel good about our students’ progress and also so we can educate parents and let them know what to expect.

Goals for the First Year of Preschool Piano

It can be hard to estimate progress with any piano student, and it’s especially tricky at this early age.

However, over the years of teaching many preschool piano students, I’ve come to land on

some key priorities for what I want them to be able to do after the first year.

• Can confidently name and navigate the piano keys• Has a basic understanding of the grand staff and can identify and draw 5 landmark notes• Can aurally identify: same/different, short/long, high/low and loud/soft and the pentatonic scale in solfa• Understands and can identify note values: quaver, crotchet, dotted crotchet, minim, dotted minim and semibreve (eighth note, quarter note, dotted quarter note, half note, dotted half note and whole note)• Can hold a comfortable round hand shape with mostly strong fingertips and sit with good posture at the piano

That’s just a quick run-down. Let’s unpack each of those and see what they really mean, and why they’re important.

Many teachers are starting to take on their first preschool piano students. Some are successful, some aren’t, and most just don’t know if they are!

What counts as good progress when we’re teaching 3- to 5-year-old piano students?

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Keyboard Geography

By the end of the first year of lessons (30-40 actual lessons) I want my little preschool piano student to know the piano keys extremely well.

That might seem like a teeny tiny goal for a whole year if you’ve never taught preschoolers before. But this is something that can come back to bite you later if you’re not careful.

So let’s be clear. What “tests” (and by tests I of course mean games) should your little preschooler pass in the area of keyboard geography by the end of the year?

• Name any key on the piano instantly when we point to it.• Quickly find a key we specify with any particular finger from either hand.• Be able to tell us what key is next/before a given key name away from the piano.

They will probably be able to do most of this after the first semester with me. But I’ve learned my lesson through my years of teaching, and I make sure to continue to check up on these core skills for the whole of the first year.

The Staff

I don’t want my preschool piano student to be reading fluently hands together on the staff after their first year.

That’s not because that’s impossible. It’s because

if you prioritise that goal, you’re going to throw pretty much all the other core skills out of the window. Remember: it’s about priorities.

What I do want them to have is a basic understanding of the staff including:

• The treble and bass clefs and what they’re for• How up/down on the staff corresponds to left/right on the piano• The difference between line notes and space notes• The difference between steps and skips• The first 5 landmark notes (in my studio that’s bass C, bass F, middle C, treble G and treble C)

If they know these basic facts, they’re off to a good start with the staff and it’s beginning to make sense

to them as a system. This understanding is far more important to me than individual note names.

Aural Skills

Two of the biggest long-term benefits in my opinion of starting music lessons at a young age are developing good rhythmic and aural skills.

During the first year, I want my students to learn to identify by ear: same vs different, short vs long, loud vs soft and high vs low.

Most of those won’t be a problem for a preschool piano student to get within the first month or two, with the exception of high vs low. That one can take quite a bit of practice for some kiddos.

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The next aural skill I start developing with my preschool students is the solfa pentascale. We start working towards this with just do, re, mi and from there we add so and finally la.

(The Kodály purists among you will be immediately admonishing me for not starting with so-mi. However, I do stand by my decision to start with do, re and mi because it is more easily applicable to the keys (starting with the 3 black keys) and beginning piano pieces.)

That’s a debate for another day though. I recommend you check out my article on Solfa for Piano Teachers…for Beginners if you want more guidance on how to include solfa in your teaching.

It’s important to get our own goals right so that we

can educate parents  and let them know what to expect.

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Rhythm Skills

I mentioned above that good rhythmic skills are one of the top benefits I see for students starting lessons at this age.

If you’ve ever had a student that just did not get rhythm, you know how tough that can be to overcome. When we put rhythm at the forefront of preschool piano lessons it means this fundamental skill is never an issue for them. It’s just natural.

You may have been a little surprised at some of the note values I included in the list for the first year such as:

• Quavers (eighth notes)• Dotted crotchets (dotted quarter notes)

The thing is, there’s nothing actually difficult about these notes and how they sound in music.

The difficult part, and I think the reason they’re left for later on in most method books, is understanding the maths. So if we don’t mention half a beat or 1 and a half beats or exactly what the dot does, we can give our students the experience of these notes much earlier on.

By the end of the first year, my preschool piano student will be able to clap and vocalise patterns using these note values and also to identify one bar patterns of them aurally given a range of options.

And my preschool students love working on rhythm because it means banging drums and boomwhackers and running around the room!

Technique

This is the hot-button issue when preschool

piano teaching comes up, which is why I’ve left it for last.

Technique doesn’t have to be a struggle if you’re teaching all those other skills and concepts in an interactive way. There’s much more to my beginning piano lessons (with every age) than just sitting still and playing five-finger songs.

Technique is only a problem if you attempt to sit a kiddo at the piano with their fingers spread out over 5 keys right from the get-go.

With that said, there is some extra work you need to do with your preschool piano student when it comes to technique.

You need to spend longer on finger numbers and the association with the movement of each individual finger.

You need to reinforce correct sitting position, bench height and footstool height many times, at home and in lessons.

You should spend a long time in non-legato work before introducing legato (but this is a great idea for students at any age to reduce collapsing finger joints in the long-run.)

That’s about it for technique.

In fact, technique probably takes the least amount of lesson time of any of these first goals – it’s all about small exercises and regular course-corrections.

Sequencing Learning for Preschoolers

These priorities and goals are reflected in both the Mini Musicians and Tiny Finger Takeoff programs. If you want to see this in action, take out one of those for a test-run.

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Kids this age are designed for movement. They're not meant to be sitting still for prolonged periods of time. They're explorers. This doesn't mean they can't learn to play piano, just that we need to get a little creative sometimes.

These five little activities can be done on the spur of the moment. As soon as you see your little piano student starting to lose focus you can act fast, use one of these quick brain breaks for preschoolers, and you'll be back to the lesson plan in no time with renewed focus and energy.

1. Flashcard Dash

OK, get your selling face on. The more you convince your preschooler that this is a game the better! (It doesn't really take that much convincing - just use your most enthusiastic voice.)

• Place some flashcards over on the other side of the room.• Ask for a particular card, e.g. "Find me an E".• Your student runs to get the card and back to place it on the music stand.• Rinse and repeat.

Easy peasy, and you'll be surprised how much fun preschoolers can have with this!

Optionally, you can ask your student to place the flashcard in a particular order on the stand. For example if they're key name flashcards, they could be placed from C up to B, or note value cards from smallest to biggest etc.

2. Sing it

Whenever we do a singing exercise, I always have my student get up off the bench. I have a second piano in my studio so I don't need them to get up for me to take the keys, but I find it helpful to get them up whenever there's an opportunity.

You can either have them stand, or take your seat. I'm not quite sure why, but my students love any opportunity to sit in the "teacher chair". Perhaps it's because it swivels... :-)

Now that she's off the bench it's time to get your preschooler singing! Here's some ways I use singing time in preschool piano lessons:

• Singing solfa (moveable do) along with scales• Singing solfa with other patterns such as arpeggios• Using solfa to help with aural interval training• Singing the lyrics to a piece they're working on• Singing the lyrics to a piece that's coming up in their book• Using rhythm syllables to sing along to one of their pieces• Simple sight-singing exercises using solfa from my 'Thinking Theory' books

All of these things can take only a few minutes out of lesson time but can make a huge difference in concentration levels for the rest of the lesson. Plus it gives us a chance to develop those often-neglected ear training skills.

5 QUICK BRAIN BREAKS for PRESCHOOLERS with the WIGGLES

If you teach preschoolers you likely already have a few brain breaks up your sleeve. And you are probably always on the lookout for more!

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Kids this age are designed for

movement. They’re explorers.

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3. Higher or Lower

Higher or lower is one of the key concepts young beginners need to grasp in piano lessons. This activity combines that necessary skill with some movement and giggles.

• Have your preschooler curl up in a ball or sit on the floor.• Start playing something on the piano. (A scale, arpeggio, or chord pattern is perfect.)• Tell your student start standing up as the music gets higher, and go back down if it gets lower.

As your student gets better at this you can make your changes faster or less obvious.

For example, in the beginning you might play single notes jumping big intervals up and down the keyboard and gradually make the turns and directions more subtle.

4. Faster or Slower

This one has brought so much laughter into my preschool piano lessons!

• Play something with a steady Andante tempo. A simple chord pattern works best.• Ask your preschooler to march around the room in time to the beat.• Begin gradually increasing or decreasing the tempo and tell your student to keep in time with you as you speed up or slow down.

Your preschooler may not be able to follow the beat this whole time precisely...in fact she might be miles off at first. Not to worry. She's still learning about tempo and beat even if she's not quite marching in time yet. The time it takes to develop this skill varies widely from child to child and it may even be years before some children can reliably tap or march to a beat.

After you've tried the activity this way round, try flipping it.

• Ask your student what tempo she would like to go at (great for reviewing tempo terms).• Start playing something at that tempo while your student marches.• Tell your student to speed up or slow down as she likes, and you'll follow her with your playing.• Attempt to stay in time with your student as she'll most likely choose to go as fast as possible!

This is much more than just a brain break, these are important skills for any beginning piano student. Following a beat and understanding tempo is essential in music making.

Just because you both end up in fits of laughter doesn't mean it wasn't a worthwhile use of lesson time. (In fact I think that makes it all the more worthwhile.)

5. Wiggle

When all else fails, you need to go with the wiggle, not against it.

Sometimes we need some silliness. If your student is falling off the bench, you may need to opt for a pure silliness break. Kids this age are just not meant to sit still for really long periods. So wiggle it out!

Tell your student she can have 30 seconds to get all the wiggles out. Then get up (yes you too!) and wiggle to your heart's content. Jump up and down & dance around, then come back to the piano bench.

This won't work for every student, but for many kids, that 30 seconds can be enough to get them back on track.

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Preschoolers will often use

this as an opportunity to

do their best imitation of

a rock quarry digger...

If there’s one thing all preschoolers have in common it’s that they’re curious. And it’s the curiosity that makes improvisation the most natural fit for preschool piano lessons because improvisation allows for exploration and makes space for preschoolers to learn through play.

Preschoolers are built to play. They need to play to understand the world and to take in the vast amount of skills and information that they’re going to absorb during this stage of life.

Young kids need to move and mess with things in order to make sense of them. If you try to go against this in the way you plan and structure your lessons, you’re going to end up with a real mess on your hands.

So go with it. Improvise first, teach later, and watch the magic unfold.

Why every PRESCHOOL PIANO LESSON should include IMPROVISATION

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Bash the Black Keys

They don’t HAVE to bash them of course. But that’s what will normally happen for the first few lessons so I wanted to give you fair warning.

Improvising on the black keys is a super easy way for any student to get started with improvisation. You, the teacher, can play a chord progression in

G flat major such as I-V-vi-IV on repeat and just instruct your student to play any black keys to make up their own music.

Preschoolers will often use this as an opportunity to do their best imitation of a rock quarry digger. That’s OK! They’re just testing things out and if you keep giving them the opportunity to explore they’ll find their way to something more melodic.

Storytelling and Scenery

One of the components of the Mini Musicians course is called Improvisation Explorations. In this part of the program, we explore four different sets of improvisation patterns and prompts set in the forrest, the ocean, the desert and the sky.

Each week we meet a new part of the scene such as rainbows and aeroplanes in the sky, or seaweed and whirlpools in the ocean. We use these to

capture the preschoolers’ imaginations and learn about the patterns and sounds of the piano along the way.

Try this out for yourself by describing a nature scene, weather or animal and coming up with simple patterns or sounds to represent each part of the scene.

If you want this process laid out for you, click here to access Mini Musicians One.

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The COUNTER-INTUITIVE TRUTH about PRESCHOOLER DEXTERITY

As preschool piano lessons gain more and more popularity around the world we need to rethink how we teach technique. Developing preschooler dexterity requires some different

thinking and strategies than you would use with an 8-year-old beginner.

Most of the traditional piano method books start in a middle C five-finger position...but is this really the best approach for preschool piano?

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The Problem with Five Finger Positions

The first issue is the five-finger positions encourage what I call "Sticky Tipitis".

I'm sure you've had students of all ages with this issue. This is where students seem to get stuck to the keys. They're reluctant to change positions, play full staccato or even hop up or down one key.

This is a danger you run the risk of with any book that stays in certain positions in order to make reading easier.

But it becomes doubly-dangerous when it comes to preschoolers as their reading progress is likely to be slower than older students. So, if you take a traditional fiver-finger, reading-focussed approach to piano with a 4-year-old they could be in that position for several years! That's going to cause all sorts of problems down the road.

The other problem is that preschoolers have SMALL HANDS.

Well, duh?!

But do we really realise how small they are? I don't think most of us fully appreciate how stretched out the five-finger position feels if you're a 4 year old.

That's why I made this little tool called the "toofpranie test". (If you want to know what a toofpranie is you'll have to read my book Playful Preschool Piano Teaching.)

The toofpranie test will let you feel how a preschooler feels in a pentascale or five-finger position. Print out the PDF here and try placing one finger on each "key" to see what I mean.

Eventually, we do want preschool piano students to be comfortable using all their fingers and playing in five-finger positions when needed. But there's no rush to get there.

My approach to gently guide them towards has two parts: at the piano and away from the piano.

Away from the Piano

Preschoolers need to switch activities often with a mixture of bigger and smaller movement tasks. Take advantage of this by working with fingerplays, puppets and finger tapping games away from the piano.

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Fingerplays help to develop preschooler dexterity and also a sense of rhythm and beat as you chant the words together. Download the Preschool Fingerplays here.

Tapping games can also be a great way to work on finger dexterity without the pressure of having to play the right note. These games help preschoolers practice using fingers independently and also encourage whole-arm movement. Download Tippy Taps here.

At the Piano

While we're working on all of this independent finger work away from the piano, our time at the piano is focussed on just using one finger at a time and moving

the whole arm to play folk songs and rote pieces.

Which finger they use is entirely up to each child and what's comfortable for them. They will instinctively use either finger 2 or 3 and you can adapt to their preferred finger when playing side-by-side with them.

When you take this gentle approach to technique and combine it with the fingerplays and games to work on dexterity off-the-bench, you'll find that most kiddos will start using their other fingers of their own volition.

This may take just a few weeks or a whole year. Let them move at a pace that suits them. Put the focus on enjoying making music together and the rest will come in time.

Let them move at a pace that

suits them. Put the focus on enjoying

making music together and the rest will

come in time.

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Ask Countess Von ClavierDo you have a question you would like answered? Whether it’s a troublesome teen

student or a sticky business wicket, Countess Von Clavier can help. Just email: countess@vibrantmusicteaching.com

Dear Countess,

I have a single student with an attention-span of about 5 minutes. Tricky thing is ... he is really good at understanding concepts and when he does pay attention he plays very well!

His mother has mentioned to me that he has some attention difficulties, but he is also in the gifted program. I really need an outline for him that he enjoys, otherwise we are bouncing around from song to song without any real increase in learning.

I find myself just trying to appease him so he doesn't get upset. If he plays a single note wrong he lets out an angry sigh and yells at himself to start over. He also says he hates playing with the left hand. Unfortunately, a lot of crucial time is spent bargaining with him on what he should practice. I'm sure this isn't the first time a teacher has had this problem. Can you provide any insight?

Dear scatty-student soother,

Sounds like your student is suffering from a severe case of failureophobia. Students like this are particular sensitive to getting things "wrong" and therefore can act out and refuse to do certain tasks because they believe they cannot succeed at them.

I recommend introducing more preparatory steps to every piece you teach than would normally be necessary. For example, if you are aiming to teach a piece called 'Marvellous Mountain' that day, first put together a rhythm puzzle using bars/measures from the piece, then improvise with the scale or position the piece uses, then sing it together as a solfa exercise, then colour the intervals on a photocopy as a theory exercise, etc, etc. This way, when the piece is finally introduced he will feel that he can do it, and will be more willing to try.

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Dear Countess,

I have a very talented middle school young man who technically plays well and plays mostly by ear. We are working on learning to read music, but I'm having to really stay on my toes to keep him motivated to read.

Before he came to me, he mostly played some pieces that he had heard and "figured out" on the piano, or some that he had seen on YouTube and then imitated.

I spend a good bit of time trying to find pieces that will appeal to him. When I find one he really wants to play, he learns it well and memorizes it as he goes – though it's good reading practice for him while he's learning it. It's just finding the music that's such a challenge.

Dear picky-preteen pleaser,

This student came to you for a reason. Have you asked him what that is? If he asked his parents for piano lessons because he wanted to learn to read music, then you need to have a conversation with him about what that entails. Once you have him on-board you could introduce short reading exercises that he can do daily and quick study pieces that he has just one week to learn. He can keep learning the more inspiring repertoire alongside this program but there needs to be a balance and he is old enough to understand that.

Now, if he does not care to read that is a whole other issue. You can have an open and honest conversation with him about why reading is important and how it could help him achieve his other goals, and that will take you some of the way towards motivation, but will not be enough to really drive him and so you will need to take a slower approach. I recommend still introducing the reading exercises as a five-minute portion of

the lesson, but don't necessarily expect them to be practised at home.

Finally, when it comes to his pickiness with bigger project pieces, I would turn this around on him. Send him some YouTube playlists as starting points and ask him to explore and find pieces he loves. At middle-school-age he should be taking more ownership of this perfect piece quest. It shouldn't all land on your shoulders.

Dear Countess,

The occasional parent seems to get a little "huffy" when we stop to play a music game, improvise, move, compose, etc. There are a few parents who have a hard time seeing the benefits of these activities in the beginning; they just want their child to be play a piece the entire 30 minutes...

Dear fellow game enthusiast,

I think you may be a victim of the curse of knowledge. We, as musicians and teachers, are immersed in the articles and research that supports how we teach everyday. We have reasons behind what we do and sometimes our brains make the mistake of acting as though these reasons are self-evident. They are not.

We do so much better when we bring parents down the road with us and involve them in what we do and why we do it. If you're not already having a meeting with every new parent and student before the first lesson I recommend you begin. You can then use this meeting to discuss how you do things in your studio, the ways in which it may look different than they are used to, and why you choose to teach in this way. Once you let parents see behind the curtains they will not only not get huffy about the creative aspects of your studio, they will likely become advocates and sing your praises because of it!

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