Before songs, before dynamics and tempos, before reading music or studying notation flashcards, before SCALES even, there are some basic skills that little or uncoordinated bodies need to have in order for everything else to make sense. We sort of take these things for granted, but you really CAN'T! Especially when teaching a BEFORE BEGINNER about these things, they need to have a sense of what music and pitch even are, and they also have to have the strength and start developing the hand-eye coordination to move individual fingers. When I was 12, I started piano lessons and learned to "warm up" and improve my dexterity through scales, but that doesn't work when the basics for even scales aren't there!
So, for our first lesson, Caida and I mostly put some music note stickers on her keyboard and played some finger games for the first half. (NOTE: a lot of my ideas came from the internet and from the amazing little WunderKeys piano series, including a LOT of what I'm about to share. If you need a "beginning piano" book for little hands, I highly recommend this one--they have a preschool and a primer series, depending on the age of your little.) I bought some super-cheap gloves from Walmart and used a Sharpie to write down numbers on each of the fingers. If you're going to do this and you don't play piano yourself, just a note that you'll want to make sure both thumbs are 1 and both pinkies are 5. It matters, because that's how fingering is written in every beginner piano book as students learn to move their fingers around and tickle those ivories!
The MOST important thing in all of this is that children learn to control individual fingers at will, mostly independent of the ones around them. They need finger strength, dexterity, and hand-eye coordination to be able to even play scales, let alone anything else worthwhile. :) Here are a few ideas I found and that we tried (new to us, so it was rocky at first, but with practice we'll both improve!):
STRETCHY SPIDER:
Have the hand curved/relaxed, fingers touching the surface of a table, palms down. This is your "spider," taking it nice and easy. When you call out a number (or, when they are more advanced, multiple numbers), have them stretch that finger up as high as they can without moving the other fingers around it (*too* much, anyway). Let that spider stretch his/her legs out!
JELLYFISH:
To build some strength in those little fingers, I put an elastic hairband around her fingers and (after showing her a video of jellyfish, because she didn't know what they were!) had her move her hand along like a jellyfish moving. Here's a video of that:
SILLY POEMS:
The Wunderkeys series I mentioned before has several little poems/motion activities for those fingers to play. We didn't get to any of these today (half an hour goes fast!) but...there is some good stuff out there if you're willing to search for it.
DON'T WAKE MR. POINTER:
Place your hand so that your thumb is on middle C and your fingers rest naturally on up through so your pinky is on G. (It's not natural OR comfortable for little hands, by the way...another thing we take for granted as adults!) "Mr. Pointer" is your forefinger, and "he" is sleeping...so your other fingers are tiptoeing around quietly trying not to wake him! You can start by just tapping the key three times with the thumb JUST quietly enough to make a sound, then skipping "Mr. Pointer" and tapping the E 3 times with your middle finger, etc., but that got old after one round for Miss ADD so we started randomizing it--slowly at first, and then faster and faster until we were in giggles and had to move on. :)
We also practiced, ON THE PIANO, just playing two different notes with fingers 1 & 2, then 1-2-3, back and forth, which was surprisingly hard. So we'll have to keep working on that, too. A LOT. Before we can get to scales, we have to master 1-2-3. :)
We also practiced, ON THE PIANO, just playing two different notes with fingers 1 & 2, then 1-2-3, back and forth, which was surprisingly hard. So we'll have to keep working on that, too. A LOT. Before we can get to scales, we have to master 1-2-3. :)
There are some other great ideas here and here if you want more finger exercises, but by this point Caida was bored so we moved on to developing a sense of pitch! I made up some cards with little roller coasters on them. The idea is that you follow the roller coaster cart along the track, and as the track goes higher or lower, so should the pitch. I only picked a few of the easier cards for this first lesson, and I did each card 3 times:
(1) I showed her an example of doing this VOCALLY, making my finger follow along the track and getting higher or lower, as shown. (It doesn't matter at which note you start, but it DOES matter that the higher points on the track are at a higher pitch and vice versa.)
(2) I had her do the same thing VOCALLY along with me. If she made a mistake, I did point it out and we tried again, since that's the whole point of this exercise. :)
(3) We did the same thing on the piano. She loved that, because even though she wasn't making any intelligible "music," she was able to translate the concept to an actual keyboard and realize that the higher she went on the piano, the higher the notes sounded!
After a couple of roller coaster cards, I spent about 3 minutes playing two random notes for her and having her tell me (without looking) if the note got higher or lower the second time. Depending on your child, this may be a challenge, but stick with it! Start with a BIG range and then close the gap later on. (This was SUPER HARD for Caida, even when I did notes several octaves apart, so we'll be working on that some more for SURE soon.)
FINALLY, because the whole reason any kid wants to play the piano is to be able to show off to their friends/family, it's important to teach them at least PART of an actual, recognizable song. (Again, depending on the readiness level of your child, that might look very different to each of you. If you don't know where to begin, use whatever book you have or pick one of their favorite songs and Google a "simplified" version, and then teach them a couple of measures each lesson for a month until they have it!) Here is Caida playing part of Mary Had a Little Lamb (with prompts):
Her "homework" was a set of "musical spelling" cards. She had to read the word out loud to her mom first, then "spell it out" on her keyboard. She has to go through the whole stack each day (I didn't give her the super hard-to-read words yet!). This is really too easy with the stickers right on the keyboard, but that's not really the point, right? The point is that she can find specific keys on the piano and to get her a "sneak peek" into learning some notes...eventually. :)
Not bad for our first 30-minute lesson! The crazy but wonderful thing about this is that, eventually, you can do the same handful of warm-ups over and over again, even once you've gotten them to scales and beginning songs. There is SO MUCH to cover with piano for a "before beginner" (posture, hand positions, finger control, tempo and rhythms, notation, etc.) and it can be extremely overwhelming to know where to start, but I feel good about how it went and I look forward to watching Caida learn a lot this year (and for ME to learn a lot right along with her...we'll be playing duets in no time).
If you have a preschooler or child with special needs and you want some great resources to help them, here are some websites I'm using a LOT this year that have games to download and tips to consider (you can use them even if you have no piano experience yourself!):
Color In My Piano (lots of printables, including more finger exercises but also musical concepts)
Colourful Keys (tips for keeping a preschool piano lesson from going off the rails!)
SpinDitty (musical basics, AKA where to start when the WHOLE WIDE WORLD OF MUSIC is out there to explore!)
I won't be sharing every lesson we do, but I'll share some activities we try from time to time, especially as I find or create things that work out really nicely. Also, taking videos that she knows will be seen by the people of the internet is a BIG motivator for Caida, so expect to be seeing lots of her progress vlog-style throughout the year. :)
