Progress of Mel02 -- 4.5 year old (4th week)

Helene, Thanks for the instructions. We would focus on sight reading and chords this Summer.

We have followed the excise for dictations in the video, how to do more dictations, shall we dictate whatever songs she remember -- like these easy song "ode to joy" right hand or both hands?

Very well done Melody!

Очень хорошо сделано Мелодия!

Melody turned 5 a few days back. She started kindergarden in September. Time really past fast. It seemed the last 4 month including Summer we didn't make as big progress as in the first 4 months since we started using Mozart.

We are continuing play Boogie 1. After Cat Boogie, Indian Boogie, Robot Rock, Melody is doing Yellow Rose of Texas ( best score is a few errors with time 9 in P5, most time is around 16), Halloween Boogie is about 20+ in time. She did not like to see the song because of quite some # notes and some are of 2 notes, say 3 and 2# arranged vertically for right hand, and she didn't know what to sing for the chords.

Recently, she also tried to mimic happy birthday song by playing out in piano and substitute it with her own version. She didn't seem to care or know its difference from the right one.

We started doing "Guess Key" regularly, by putting a fan in screen just enough to blurry the tree, while she is still able to see score. This is to make sure she is using her ear more than her eye. Today about 27 seconds, the tree moved. She got about 260 around 3:30. The program stopped responding. It happened a few times, so we didn't try to go to 5 minutes. It seemed when Melody pressed the same key in high frequency -- she felt she could have done it right, the program stopped responding.


Pondering over Melody's progress, I am thinking to focus on ear training and sight reading more for some more time. And trying to figure the good way of conducting it.

She is able to identify each individual note from low low 1 to high high 1 quite a few months back, though not very quickly. But when she did sight reading on 1.x level, she would tumble her fingers, it looks like she sees a note, played it, but before reaching for the next note, her finger goes already because the hand likes to. So she made more errors. Rarely at first time for a new song, each hand can go under 5 errors.



I am curious if we should play sight reading more on level 6, in where, time signature, tempo, pattern could be observed more. Today tested Melody about the tempo/measure, a simple tune of 1234 | 5432| and do it in quarter note, eighth note, 16th notes while listening to meters. It seems to be very challenging. Something might be missing, or I am looking at things to early?

The other thing is that without new point, if just play song, she is now harder to be engage. I am wondering what to be expected in her next step, how to make steady progress in little steps? A bit baffled and overwhelmed.

We put much emphasis in beats and focused on "Guess Key" and "Note Duration". I showed her the final picture of "Note Duration", so she is moving well with a goal.

The trick in Note Duration is that the program will freeze if there is 3 consecutive errors. So after a few time freeze, she got to level 8, the next try a couple of day after then 11, then another try 21.

Guess Key she is doing by listening, we used some screen to block the tree, but she is still able to see score. Last week she was excited seeing the 4th tree now, 300+ some score about 5:00 minutes. She liked the three baskets.

We did not engage much in playing new songs. Waiting Hellene to guide us on that, it is much more progress when Hellene picked the songs.