My sister had wanted me to try teaching her 4 year old girl piano, hoping test out to see if she is interested in learning piano. And if the test is positive, then my sister will look for a qualified teacher to teach her and get her a new piano! My niece will be using the old Schubert piano which I have given my sister when I bought my Hailun piano.
I guess, this is our cheaper way to test out the interest of our child. I intend to also self teach my girl when she is older to see if she is interested before sending her to formal lessons. I have seen many cases where the child is not interested but being forced to learn piano and never enjoyed it, which I think it is simply a waste of money, coz in the end, these children will never touch the instrument ever again. So if my girl or my niece is not interested, we shall stop and maybe re-introduce it again when they demonstrate that they are interested when they are older.
I will be starting my first lesson with her this coming weekend. This is my first time formally teaching piano to another person and of course, my first time teaching a young child. Hence it is also a learning experience for me. Hope that with this experience, I will also learn how to teach a young child better and apply it to my girl when she is older. Hence, I made my way down to Bras Basah to look for method books for my niece.
I had chosen 2 books for her, not sure if they are the best, but I thought it has lots of activities and pictures in the book which hopefully can keep her interested. And at the same time, they are prepared to prepare young children to move from beginner to Grade 1. There are 4 levels for this series, and of course, I bought Book 1. The 2 books is $17.40 together, so it is not that expensive.
The 2 books chosen are:
(1) Poco Piano for Young Children – Book 1
(2) Music Theory for Young Children – Book 1
I have went through the books and understand the syllabus covered. I have also been trying to plan out my lessons. How fast or how slow I go will depend on how long I can keep my niece interested. I may start with a 30 mins lesson for a start and see how she response. I guess I may need to prepare some self-made teaching materials too, so trying to surf the net to get more ideas.
Will share again after my first lesson with her, and from there, I will see how I can improve and make the learning more interesting. Come to think of it, teaching young children is not an easy task. Teaching adult beginners could be much easier.
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3 comments:
All the best! My little son's teacher has a lot of interesting ways / ideas to engage him. I follow on with those ideas in home practice.
eg. 1st lesson she used a small ball for him to hold and said that's how he should shape his fingers, and not "flat like pancake" or she'd want to eat the pancake! ;D
Then she did some copycat "rhythm clapping" activities. To get him to focus when she's showing him how to play, she got him to *hop* onto her hand while she played. She used little animals to help him identify notes on the keyboard(actually he already knows). Oh, and some finger-recognition and exercise too.
Hope that helps you!
Thanks. Teaching young child is not easy. I need to spend whole lesson teaching which is left hand amd which is right hand. And which finger is 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5.
Ya, starting on rhythm today. Hope she can follow.
Hmm...we don't teach 1,2,3,4,5. The teacher did do counting of fingers with my boy, but doesn't emphasize the numbers, and neither do I. When I practise with him, I only say "thumb, pointer, tall-man, ring-man, pinky". Sometimes when he is confused between pinkie/tall-man/pointer, I'd mention "pinkie's neighbour", or "Thumb's neighbour". Maybe you take a look at my latest blog entry post on what he is doing.
My boy has no problem with differentiating left from right though, altho' I'm not sure how he got that.
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