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Home › Preparatory B (from 3 to 5). Lesson 2

Preparatory B (from 3 to 5). Lesson 2

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Pedagogy

How is your experience teaching your child so far?

Pedagogy:

What is the priority in learning and teaching music? 

The central figure of my Method is the learner.

An “ideal performance” of a music piece is not a priority of our teaching.

The main product of our efforts is the stable, successful and fun development of a child or adult beginner in learning to play the piano. However, an “ideal performance” often appears as a side effect.

Music is a tool that helps us bring out the best qualities of every student. We can use music to make a person stronger and improve the unique quality of someone’s inner self.

Unfortunately, we may teach a student to play one piano piece beautifully, but kill forever any love of making music.

Music was, is and always will be here on this earth. And only fun and successful learning will promote the desire to further develop or even master a student’s musical skills.

Music notation should be adjusted to the student’s perception. Changing music to make it easier or to digitize it doesn’t hurt a music text.

On the other hand, students can be hurt if they have to deal with the user-unfriendly way of reading music.

Ideal performance is an abstract notion. Performance that is far from ideal can’t hurt a music piece. Demanding that a student play perfectly and forcing the student to submit to this goal can cause incurable damage to the student’s psychological health.

Ultimately, it can affect his/her entire life. Learners—with their self-sufficiency, uniqueness, confidence and their own strengths—are the priority of the Hiner Method.

We have no right to decide for learners, whether or not they will be professional musicians. Therefore, we cannot push them to become concert pianists. Our task is to involve students in music and instill in them a love of communicating with sounds.

...

Fine motor skills and coordination development

1. Keep working on the "5 fingers" exercise

2. Learning the piano geography: pressing white keys and saying - singing their names:

 ....

Music theory and ear training

1. Keep working with cards and musical rows from Do to Do and back.

After placing all the cards in order hide a card and ask a child to guess its name by counting the order of the notes in the row.

Video Sample:

2. Do you know the order of circles and green/brown stripes for applying to the piano keys?

Here is the map of their location for you:

 Image

The piano key stickers with the Italian syllables for each note (solfeggio) are presented by pictures of Door, Rain, Mirror, Farm, Salt, Ladder and Tea.

We recommend you to use the pictures for your child's music ear development through his/her voice.  Please, use our instruction below to apply the stickers correctly.

The meaning of colors and pictures:

     5 green stripes are for the keys that related to the lines of the Treble Clef.

     5 brown stripes for the keys that interrelated with the lines of the Bass clef.   

     Half brown, half green - for the middle Do, located on the ledger line.     

     Red is the color of the notes on the lines.

     Blue is the color of all notes between the lines.

    A lightly colored blue space between the 3rd and 4th lines to indicate the  beginning of the next octave.

Why stickers?

The use of stickers will help develop coordination and remove stress and anxiety from the fear of pressing the wrong key. Since there are a lot of keys and they look the same, it is necessary to make it easier to find them.

Our stickers are similar to the "road signs". With them you will never get lost and you will always find the right key. The color scheme of these stickers creates a direct and subconscious visual association of the piano keys with the Music Staff. .

....

Piano performance
ImageGentle Piano®
Did you child or student learn how to keep pressing the piano key long enough with our "Butterfly" piece»?

Share your video with us in our forum - so we will be able to watch your success and be proud of you.

Sometimes it happens that it is difficult for a child to concentrate on one note. In such cases, some parents and educators resort to this trick:



Sometimes you will have to cover the piano keys too:


However, most often the child quickly learns to focus on "her/his" key and note from the musical text.

Rely on the program numbers! If in the lower right corner the amount of the time lag is not much greater than the number of correctly played notes, then your student or child does not need any additional visual cues .

Image Download and save NEW PIECE - the "Butterfly - 2"  link to download and add the piece to your Album 0. There are only 4 notes in the piece. Play them!

ImageNow it is time to learn how to play "Hot Cross Buns"  - L1 - the left hand (4 bars and 6 chords) using 2 pointers of both hands with the visual help of the piano stickers.


Click on the picture below and watch the video that will help you to understand how you can help the young beginner to learn to coordinate 2 fingers to play 2 notes at a time:






Now let's try to play Hot Cross Buns with both hands
ImageGentle Piano®
If it works well and the amount of time lag is no more than the number of notes played, try playing the L1 part with one left hand. Video example:


Music sight-reading. In this type of work, a child does not have to improve the performance of the piece. It is enough to play a segment or the whole piece a couple of times and compare the result .

Favorite Classic 0: play Joseph Hayden "Surprise Symphony" with  R1.
Video sample:


.

....

Music appreciation

Music Theory theater

Check out the fairy tale of our Theater of Theory "What is music - and what is noise".

This story will help teach your child to appreciate the sound of music and not respect screaming and noise.

The best friend of noise is a headache (this is the most important concept for any baby today!). Of course, there are quite a few other concepts in this story.

Just watch and listen!

By the way, you will hear the same theme from Haydn's  "Surprise" Symphony in history.

After playing, you will get a special pleasure to hear the music performed by the orchestra!

 

 ....

 

Visit our Soft Mozart forum and start your progress diary here. Use the current year section. This is the place for you to ask questions and share your experiences.

At least 2 photos and 1-2 videos of the listed activities will count towards your child's credits for the graduation DIPLOMA. Please upload the video to You Tube, copy the address from the BROWSER window and paste it into your Progress Diary. Do not forget to indicate the year and type of work in the description of your Soft Mozart Academy photo / video.

Sincerely Yours,
Hellene Hiner

Video success:

PS

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All the lesson plans:
For 2+ students
For students from 3 to 5
For students 5+

For adults - beginners

Always check here, if we have any recital!  You and your child will benefit a lot from participating in our concerts!

Your place to start your progress diary is here.

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