Hello from MA/USA

namaste wrote: Also, they were still 2 years old in September when the curriculum started. Sorry I am so confused on where to start since we're coming in during December and are only using the demo and trying to get the kids to do some of the exercises. They find it too overwhelming to do 5 finger exercises both hands to start. One won't even do it with the right hand, the other one would do it with right hand only.

I am still working on my second book with all the practical advices Little to no time for that yet. Will try to help on line as much as I can! It is great that you post comments! It helps me to help you better.

Thank you so much for your feedback. I saw some videos on here for different ways of teaching the musical alphabet and put the flashcards on pieces of cardboard and they jumped from one to the next with the song I found developed by others on the forum. Since they are very active little boys this was a fun way to engage them in learning. I am just amazed at how many resources there are here even though they are rather scattered on the forum.

They are starting to sing the notes as they play them, and I got both of them to at least put their right hand but it's hard for them, as I saw in other feedback, yes the 4th and 5th fingers are weak, particularly for one of them who has slightly low muscle tone.

If we follow the 24 month - 36 month curriculum should we still post our progress in the academy section?

Major progress yesterday. Just from using the demo version, Sasha was able to sing hot cross buns in solfeggio. And my other son Cornelius has improved in 3 days since I started tracking him on playing the happy birthday song cutting his time in half from 40 to 19 and improving his accuracy to 100%. That's R1 12/12 19.

We were supposed to receive the CD in the mail but sadly it did not arrive.

Cornelius still continues to use one finger at a time for everything. Sasha often looses focus in the middle of the exercise, so I'm hoping that the other games will engage his attention more. They play with it from 5-15 minutes a couple times a day.

I was looking on the downloads section and I like the idea there of the flowers that you laminate and attach to sticks which can be inserted into a cardboard box for a singing garden. I think they would enjoy that.

They both watched the video and we've been listening to surprise symphony once a day right now.

I am not sure that play dough would work for them since i think the temptation to squeeze and run and get their play dough toys would be too much to resist but I did find some printable piano keyboards and I think I'm going to practice with that for moving towards naming the fingers and using the R hand. We're getting some advent calendars and I think I will link practicing on the printable keyboard the naming of their fingers and using one hand on the right side with getting to open up the day each day. I am not sure if the printable keyboard I found is the exact dimensions of the piano keys, so that might be helpful if anyone has a resource.

On further examination of the lesson plans I think we can progress with the 2 year old curriculum until we are more confident and successful and then move on to the 3 year old curriculum. Can you join the academy at any point in time so we could join when they are ready to move to the 3 year curriculum?

Thank you so much.

I did find a keyboard made by someone on this site in the share section, so thanks!

We played the do re mi song today and put stickers we received in the mail on a laminated keyboard. I worked on helping name their fingers but it's a long process because they don't even know the other names for their fingers (pinkie, middle finger, etc).

They enjoyed the pick note game but again were not comfortable just using their right hand. Not sure how much I should push them on that. They enjoyed it and wanted to play it for a long time.

Also I could not figure out how to stop the pick note game aside from quitting it. People seemed to have stopped it to take photos of scores online.