Piano Theory Children
Giving Piano Lessons?
I am giving my first piano lessons in two days and I am unsure on how to prepare. They are two siblings, a nine year old boy and a fifteen year old girl.
The boy has no experience and his mother wants him to learn to play to improve his motor skills. She mentioned he has a short attention span and is on a lower learning level than most kids his age. The girl has played violin, hated it, and has played the piano for a few months.
I am worried about teaching, since I was a very obedient child and playing just makes sense to me. I’m sure other pianists know what I mean by that!
As for my experience, I’m nineteen and have been playing for twelve years and am in my second semester as a piano performance major. I have a great understanding of music theory.
Any tips on books to use, methods to use, and what to start out with?
I have to agree with pianojazzman, John Thompson books are great. I always start all my students that are young out in the Teaching Little Fingers to Play series. It’s the only reputable series that starts kids immediately reading music on the staff. All of the other methods do that stupid “picture notes” crap for a book and then try to wean students off that and onto reading real music.
For children with short attention spans, I always break up the lesson into mini segments. So for example, I do 5 minutes of practicing sitting in correct posture/curving the fingers/placing the hands on the keys/curving the hand over a ball/anything physical (this includes playing the keys one at a time and saying the notes out loud); then i do 10 minutes of lesson book stuff; next we do 5 minutes of theory book stuff (which for this young, generally includes something they get to color or draw on); then 5 minutes of technique (yes, i do technique at the end at a young age); and at the end, i do some kind of a game. Most of the time I get the kids to make up ways to remember the notes of the piano, or something like that. I had one kid who remembered all the keys because of baseball words.
With the girl, I would start her in the Piano Adventures for Adults books (I think it’s Faber and Faber who publishes that, I can’t remember). The book is thicker, so it lasts for more lessons, and it’ll have stuff more on her lever. For that, I would just do a straight lesson of 20 minutes to start with, and then end with 10 minutes of theory. (I’m working under the assumption that each lesson is going to be 30 minutes)
Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions! Kids will do some weeeeeeird things during their lessons
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