Learning with little Miss A

OCTOBER - BEGINNING OF NOVEMBER

I just thought I should update you on our progress with Soft Mozart so far. It's been a busy time here, with many trips to the doctor too but things are getting better despite all the obstacles!!

What we have been doing: somehow went through Segment 1 and now about to finish Segment 2 (not perfectly...):

Surprise Symphony (Haydn) and E. Humperdinck ‘Slumber Song’: listening, trying to play it (only mommy of course...). She can sit and listen to it or dance around, sometimes if I start to hum it she will continue too. So far so good! Thinking about starting with now with Segment 3 - Tchaikovsky ‘Nutcracker’

EAR TRAINING

Well... "guess key" module is not going too well yet. She might hit the right key sometimes but most of the time she just wants to look and point at the apples, spiders and baskets

The alphabet song is a favorite here, she can listen to it non-stop. Knows the cards and an point at the right one when asked.

I also made some "notes" out of felt, colored them and drew the note symbols. She finds them even more interesting than the cards. She can point at them and sing the notes as you can see in the video: (btw she knows "mi" too but she forgets it in this video):




PIANO

She knows which finger corresponds to each note, as you can see in the video (she points at the right finger when asked):



But despite knowing this she does not always want to use the right finger for each key when playing

She can also place the thumb on middle Do when asked, she also knows which note is which on the keyboard (probably because of the stickers, I tried with a piano which had no stickers and she was confused )
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THEORY THEATER

It's fun to watch but I wonder how much she understands (English is not our first language). It would be great to have it in Spanish too! (or maybe even Russian she would understand a bit).

GENTLE PIANO

We play together right hand Hot Cross Buns and Jingle Bells. She can hum them, sometimes tries to sing with solfeggio (not too well!). She can play mi-mi-mi (jingle bells), sometimes if in a good mood maybe something else but not too often. She likes to listen to the piano playing by itself (listening mode). Seems to still have trouble seeing the correspondence between notes on the screen and hitting a note on the keyboard, but I'm not too worried because it's always like this with her: many times I try to teach her something and it looks like she doesn't understand, then one day she surprises me and she can do it

That's all for now... learning has been quite fun and relaxed so far, I usually sit at the piano and then she just comes herself. If she doesn't want to play then we don't... so it's nice so far although I'm afraid we are not the fastest learners out there

I'm hoping to start with Segment 3 this week, although it seems very very hard!! She will be 2 years old in 1 month.

Thanks for all the support and a big hug!

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER

Not much to say about these last weeks.

Miss A is not too interested in the piano and nothing seems to work (music money either). If I start playing sometimes she will come and sit on my lap, but refuses to play the notes on the screen.

I wonder whether she is just too little (she just became 2 a few weeks ago).

She seems to be going through a phase of NO-NO-NO and doesn't want to do anything herself. I have to play for her, she won't play for me unless I beg her

The only thing we've managed so far is: I take her fingers and I play the notes with her fingers, looks like this: (see picture below).




MUSIC APPRECIATION

She listens to the Nutcracker although she doesn't like the video (!!) so I just put it as a background while she is playing. The same with Liszt. The Carol of the Bells seems to scare her a bit

EAR TRAINING

Can point at DO, RE, MI etc when she hears the Doremi song or when I ask her, but won't put the cards in order yet (maybe she doesn't want to or she can't, I don't really know).

PIANO

5 fingers exercise - this just keeps getting NO-NO-NO

GENTLE PIANO

I try to play with her fingers. She decided she doesn't like Hot Cross Buns and want to play only "Old McDonald". Well I actually play it with HER fingers!

She also refuses to look at the notes on the screen. She saw me once playing from a book (music book!) so now she just brings her own picture books and thinks we can play the story So we play Old McDonald looking at pictures of cows and pigs instead of notes (sigh...). I feel quite bad about it but it's the only way she will come near the piano...

Any ideas...? Maybe I should just stop insisting and wait that she will want to play on her own?

OK! Now the picture uploaded!! Thanks Hellene!

I forgot to write about the "guess note" module, or "The tree" as we call it at home.

This is her favorite so far and will play willingly - sometimes. Still, I can't provide a score or anything because she also loves the spiders and hits the wrong notes on purpose!

It's been quite a long time since I last posted. Actually 3 months! As I said back then, my daughter lost her interest in the piano and I really don't want her to hate it, so I let her do as she wants. But still I tried to play in front of her at least for 10-30 minutes, 3-5 times a week.
At first she ignored me

Then it seems she really hated the introductory songs / first steps, but one week ago I started one level more (Simona's Repertoire) and she LOVED listening to the Allegro of Reinagle. She suddenly seated next to me and kept saying: mama, play more, more! It was lovely!! I was actually about to despair with the piano at that moment. She still didn't want to play.

But then yesterday she just wanted to sit on my lap while I was playing and she suddenly wanted to play the left hand.

And this is how it looked like:





After this, today she asked me to play a bit with the Notes Tree. Her attention span is short and wants me to play the notes half of the times. But still, she seems to remember perfectly how to play:



Well this has been an interesting couple of days. It seems we must be persistent because, when we expect it the most, their interest comes back!

Happy spring to everyone.