Learning with little Miss A

Hello, Bookworm! Welcome!

Hi everyone!

we are new here and looking forward to learning together with Soft Mozart.

I have never played the piano so I will start learning together with our little girl (Miss A), soon be 2 years old.

Good deal! I suggest you to pick Prep C for yourself to be a little ahead, though!

Today was our first day and I introduced her to the new solfeggio stickers on the piano (she liked them) and showed her the Note Guess game and Gentle piano.

She didn't seem to understand the Note guess game and just pressed the keys randomly.

She is now at the very beginning stage of *situation awareness*
Experiencing touching, visual and auditory stimuli and connecting them together in one complex skill. She will pass through stages of learning about spiders, butterflies, flowers and it all is perfectly natural. Look - feel - touch experience stage in progress

On the other hand, she seemed to like the Gentle piano "game": we set it to right hand only and tried to identify the note on the screen and find it on the keyboard. Surprisingly she liked this a lot and wanted to do it for 20 - 30 mins (although she was also pressing random keys half of the time).

Your daughter has an excellent attention span!

Here is some tips for keeping her from being distracted:










All in all I'm happy she didn't peel off the stickers and wanted to search for the right keys. I can't provide any scores yet because there were so many mistakes and it took ages to finish Hot Cross Buns (and I had to press so many keys myself so I guess it doesn't count).

Please, press F1 key and learn how to cut a piano piece in smaller segments. You can give her just 3 notes to play and she will have the feeling of accomplishment.

Afterwards we found Hot Cross Buns on YouTube and she was delighted.


What a joy will be to see her finding Hayden and Mozart a little down the road!

I want to start myself playing some pieces for her, I wanted to start with the Ode to Joy. I will try to do Hanon 1 too.

Great plan! Post videos! It will be fun!

Will keep you posted and will be of course very happy to read any feedback

Thank you very much for your post! Great start! I am excited

OUR PROGRESS DURING THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER

We just started with Soft Mozart a couple of weeks ago but it’s been an interesting experience so far.

Little Miss A will soon be 22 months old, so not yet 2, which makes things a bit more... thrilling sometimes But I must say all in all we have fun and many times I must convince her to leave the piano and “play” with other “toys” (she thinks the piano is only hers, and probably that it’s a toy...). She is enjoying herself so I hope this is enough for such a short time, as there is not much visible progress yet.


Yes, currently she is observing everything. You will be surprised one day!

We started by playing Hot Cross Buns in Gentle Piano and try to do it every day if we can. Now we cover part of the screen and keyboard with paper to make it less confusing (as Hellene suggested).

You also may cut just couple of bars (6 notes of the right hand) and make the task even more simple! Press F1 to learn how.

She can recognize the symbol on the screen and play it on the keyboard when asked but won’t do it without my help. Otherwise, her playing looks like this (please don’t laugh):


One of our parents even took her son's hands and gently kept it during practicing. I remember, how many people were saying that it is not going to fly. Sure enough in couple of months he was practicing with 2 hands. The bottom line is: you even play using her fingers (if she would let you!)

Are you practicing to pick the cards by their name as it was suggested in Lesson plan?


I sometimes play it for her too, this is me on my 4th try ever playing Hot Cross Buns:

You are having excellent progress! Think of playing all the Introductory now. Soon enough you are going to play Nursery 1 and Favorite Classic 1. I also very happy to see that your baby i having role model. Outstanding experience!


I have noticed she can sing the song perfectly though, which is nice being still so little.

Singing with solfeggio names?

We play Guess Note, and it’s the same story than Gentle Piano: she mostly just wants to play a key (she really likes Re...) but will do it well if I keep asking her to.

She is still getting used to the situation, getting into visual kinesthetic experience, watching spider. This is all perfectly natural!

We listen to classic pieces everyday (a different one each day) and tell her the name of the composer and the piece.

Are you following the lesson plan music appreciation curriculum too? I built a classical piece of the month into the different activities: listening, pressing keys, watching the theory theater story etc. The advance forms of music have many layers and it is important to listen to the same symphony, for instant. many times indifferent occasions and in different interpretations.

We sing the notes with the piano (Do, Re, Mi...) and she will repeat them with quite good intonation if she’s in a good mood.

What about music money? Did you ever consider using them?
You can read about this approach here: www.softmozart.com/forum/20-hellene-hine...rite-a-new-book.html
There was a webinar about this here:
pianolearningsoftware.com/pages/webinar_1

We also made the Solfeggio flash cards and sometimes listen to the accompanying song which came with Soft Mozart. She likes playing with them and looking at the symbols although I don’t think she knows the right order just yet.

Oh... you just let her pick a card as suggested in the lesson plan:
www.softmozart.com/forum/63-lesson-plans.html
Your daughter should be at Prep A
I described some steps in working with cards there.

We also bought the book “The Kingdom of Tune” but still have’nt started reading it.

The Theory theater is also built on the book. So, everything will come naturally together!

As for me, so far I’ve tried to play Hot Cross Buns, the Ode to Joy etc. I can do it with mostly no errors but I see I’m still a bit slow. I tried The Small Fir Tree but I really don’t know where to put my fingers, it’s so confusing for me when I run out of fingers (I can find the keys from Do major to Sol, but then... what then?). The same with the left hand, I’m always very confused.

There are some stages in learning with Soft Mozart. You have to learn exercises (your exercises are listed in the lesson plan - Prep C). Playing the exercises will help you with your fingers management.

Also watch the numbers on the right: when they are lower then numbers of notes played (on the left) you will have enough 'room' in your mind for correct fingering.

After having perfectly with both hands and with the low time, hide the right, left and both hands. Play with no computer. And after that you can polish your piano pieces with our TEACHING VIDEOS. Please, look here for the pieces that you had learned so far: www.softmozart.com/forum/55-teaching-videos/page-2.html

Turn the video on and play synchronically with it - first with the metronome and after that without.

I’m doing the finger exercises (I think the name is Hanon #1?) but I didn’t manage to tape that yet. We actually got a new “student” at home and my Dear Husband has started to play a bit too

Oh... glad to hear that! It means that everything is coming alone. Great!

All in all, I can’t say the little one is playing the piano just yet, but she seems interested and can sing quite well. I suppose we should just keep trying with the same song? Or should we be doing something else?

Yes! Listen to the French Song and Jingle Bells, cut small sections and let her play literally couple of notes. She is now on stage of building focus and concentration. For her all the sensations are destructive, but it should be this way. It won't last long. I am glad that you recorded her video banging on the keys. Soon enough this video will be very precious reminder of where she were just little time ago.

PS: Sorry I don't know how to insert the videos! It's the first time ever I'm recording and uploading anything

Just copy the video link from the BROWSER and pas it here. That's all!

You are very welcome!

If you will see that someone needs YOUR help, feel free to share your experience!

First, this is FUN

Second, it will save me a lot of time creating more learning materials for you!

Happy learning!