I love my new beginners ♥
I don’t remember any other year when I’ve had such a delightful bunch of Brand New Beginners. They’ve all had that important first lesson now and it’s going to be a fun year! I stuck to my guns this year about the starting age. While some teachers start them really young (see previous post!) my strong preference is for beginners who are already 7 years old (I’ll bend for girls – I might start them at age 6). If parents want lessons for a child younger than this I suggest a group program specifically geared for young children.
Two of my new 7-year-olds are younger siblings of current students, two are 9-year-olds who have fathers who play, and one is the son of an adult student – a bright boy – he wants to play the french horn and drums but his mom is “making” him learn the piano first. Smart mom!
I started the younger sibling students off-staff in Piano Adventures. With the other 3, after the standard keyboard geography and posture/hand position/round fingers stuff, we went straight to the staff and notation.
I told the bright boy about Middle C being in the middle of the staff – the Playground, I call it (got that from some old method book somewhere, sometime) – and showed him B and D – Middle C’s only friends. He twigged onto the B that was close to the bass clef and announced that that was the bully side of the playground. The treble staff was, naturally, for the enemies of the bullies. Anti-bullies? Sweet Young Things? Terrified Kindergarteners? And I always thought it was the bullies who were the enemies.
Related articles
- First Lessons (ladonasmusicstudio.com)
- That clock keeps ticking… (ladonasmusicstudio.com)
Young or old – they should consider themselves blessed to be able to get lessons…
Thank you, Dave. Some of them do come around to that thinking eventually.
It’s never too late, you know…