Let’s get started with first piano When do you know if your child is ready to start learning the piano? How can I tell if they are going to like it? My child is only 4 years old– is it too early for her to start piano lessons – will it be a waste of time and money? These are very frequently asked questions by parents who are interested to send their children for piano lessons.
There is no age limit to start piano lessons, because firstly, it is important that the child shows interest and is keen in playing the piano, and is able to sit still and concentrate for certain period of time, approximately 15-30 minutes, and is happy coperate with the piano teacher.
It is a lot easier if they can already recite alphabet, so that is probably best time to give a head start, and not to stress them with too much information at once! It also helps if they have strong tiny fingers, although this can be trained through daily home practice, but if their hands are still very small, it maybe better to give them some time that allows their fingers and bones to grow stronger.
We design some fun music games and activities for first young kids’s piano lessons, to help strengthening the recognization of notes and 2 hands co-ordination. They are presented in a fun and couraging way that doesn’t cause the child to be stressed during the lessons, they will find the activities very engaging and motivated hence will encourage them to practise the piano at home.
With these made easy methods for kids piano lessons, parents will be able to help and revise their own child in the basic of playing the piano. This will also help to build the foundations in a engaging and easy way, giving children the incentive and confidence to go for proper one-to-one lessons and be in a cheerful and relaxing environment to learn and make the most of them. Improvement will be much faster, and they will be more likely to progress and develop a life time hobby in playing the piano.
Fun and easy way to start your first piano lesson:
1. Sitting in front of the piano, at middle C position, tell your child that the right hand plays the keys at higher register, and the left hand plays the keys at lower register, and explain that it is more comfortable to let each hand handle each side of the piano keys. Allow them to discover some high and low sounds, and ask them what are the differences.
2. Ask them to play the groups of 2 black keys and 3 black keys, from higher descend to lower notes and from lower notes ascend all the way up to higher keys. And remind them to use right hand for higher notes and left hand for lower notes.
3. Teach them how to locate the middle C note by finding the group of 2 black keys in the middle – C locates right before these 2 black notes. Introduce the middle C by telling them that a cat is staying in this room, and look for all the cat’s position up and down the piano, by playing all the high Cs with right hand and all the low Cs with left hand. Move around by finding for the group of 2 black keys. Help them to realize that there are always the same intervals of 8 notes away from each other each time, the distance of every 8 notes is called an Octave, just like a caterpillar with 8 legs!
4. The animal that stay next to the cat is a dog, D for dog! And the dog stays inside that room which is located between the 2 black keys, look for all the Ds across the piano’s keyboard, repeat what you did when learning the C’s note.
5. E is for ELEPHANT! Elephant stay at the right most position of the 2 black keys, because elephant is big enough to protect the 2 little animals cat and the dog. Repeat the exercise of finding all the E notes by hopping up and down the keyboard, keep reminding them that Es locates at the right most position of the 2 black keys.
6. The next note is F for FISH! Repeat the hopping exercise in the same way again, reminding them that it locates in front of the group of 3 black notes.
7. The next note is G for GOAT, look for all the Gs across the keyboard, this time we can use the middle C as starting note, make sure that the right hand plays all the Gs at right side of middle C and left hand plays all the Gs that are at the left side of middle C.
8. A for APPLE comes after Goat, beside hopping across the keyboard with same way, also help them to discover that the standard piano keyboard starts and ends with the As.
9. The last one is B for BOY – repeat the hopping exercise, and remind them that the Bs locate at the right most position at the group of 3 black keys. After that revise the notes by teimallling them that next note after B for boy will be C again, from there we can start another cycle of C, D, E, F, G, A and B again we have reached C again!
Now give them a worksheet to see if they can recall all the animals from C to B again by pasting removable stickers on piano keys, children always fascinated by colourful stickers and will enjoy activity like this. Although this seems to have too many notes to be learned for the first piano lesson, children would really enjoy the game of pasting correct animal’s stickers on the correct keys and find out the correct sequence of the animals, and after these games they will like to show that they can remember which animals go to which notes. Start every piano lesson with this game by motivating the child until they can name all the notes quickly and confidently, from here we can start to jumble up all the notes and pick different notes randomly, if they can name all the notes correctly, then we can move on to higher level.
First time here? Make sure you go through our introduction to First Piano Lessons before you start!
Up and Down the keyboard. The first piano lessons should be fun and exciting, after locating the notes we can start to introduce the fingerings and hand position by drawing around the hands of the child so that she can see the shape of her hands on a sheet of paper, after that try to praise that the shapes look beautiful! Otherwise, you can show her the finger chart that can be found easily in piano beginner’s book. Ask the child to write down the number 1 -5 on both hands beginning with the thumbs as 1 and the little pinky as 5. Tell them that on piano score we label our fingers numbers to so that we know which notes is played by which fingers. Show them that each finger take turns to play it’s own note.
Using the game of naming animals as a method to find middle C, place the Right Hand’s fingers 1-5 on CDEFG keys. Ask the child to play C,D,E,F,G accordingly with correct fingerings, and each note repeat 3 times clearly and slowly – call this exercise Up And Down the ladders and stairs. Explain that 4th and 5th fingers are normally weak than other fingers, because they are normally a bit sluggish and lazy to do anything on their own – that is why it is tough in the beginning, but just like learning how to write your name or learning to swim, regular home practice will always help to improve! Repeat this activity with the Left Hand, with the finger No.1 (thumb) on middle C and the rest of left hand’s fingers going down one by one in the opposite direction.
* The fingers should be able to lift up independently after striking each note, difficult in the beginning, but frequent home practice can help to improve.
* Make sure each note is played clearly before you strike the next key (children often have a habit of holding two or three notes down due to lack of muscle control, so remind them and give them a little help by lifting their fingers up each time after they strike a key and before moving on to the next key)
