The Next Mozart? 6-Year Old Piano Prodigy Wows All

Amazing 6-year-old pianist and composer! Aside from her obvious gifts, I love her family's attitude about music and supporting her. You can tell that her music comes from her love for music. That same kind of love is what we are cultivating in our young musicians!

Audiation--Red Balloons

You saw in class this week how we sang "Three Blind Mice" leaving out parts of the song and "singing them in our heads," instead of out loud.  This is called Audiation and is an important skill to develop as it is the precursor for singing harmony and composition.  You can practice this skill with any favorite songs while hanging out in the house or driving in the car.  Just remember to ask each time if they heard the music in their heads while they were being silent.

REMINDER:  Only send the bells with the students on the weeks when parents come.  This week is a drop-off week, so all they need are their homework booklets, with their completed homework assignment!

Hope you are enjoying your holiday weekend!  See you Wednesday!

Green Turtles--This is the Red Chord

We learned some exciting things in class this week!  Did your students show you the red dots on their fingernails?  I'm sure they've washed off, by now, but you can use a red marker (or maybe a dot of red nailpolish) directly on their fingernails to help them line up their 1-3-and 5 fingers with C-E-and G on their keyboards.  Hopefully you all saw the note to add the rest of the stickers for the red chord on their keyboard/piano at home. Now they are going to be able to start accompanying themselves.  So exciting!

We also learned the correct "C position" for our right hands (they should be using just the right hand at this time).   To help them remember, we came up with a little rhyme/melody.  It goes:

"Thumb on C and a finger for each key"

Play and sing middle C for each note and on "-ger" go up the scale.  In other words "CCCCCC-D-E-F-G"  (or Do, Do, Do, Do, Do, Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So).  And played with the correct fingers (1,1,1,1,1,1,-2-3-4-5).

Let me know if you have any questions about this or the practice!  So excited for them to get to start playing songs on their keyboards!

Just for Fun...

I thought I would share this video with you.  I think it is hilarious of my daughter, but also a good illustration of how kids naturally are interested in the things that we do.  Your enthusiasm for music will rub-off on your child.  In this video, I never "taught" my daughter this song.  I was actually the one who had to perform this song for a patriotic program at my church.  Through listening to me practice and watching the performance, she learned this song!  Now I'm not sure where her performance style comes from....:-)