Teaching your child how to play the piano will have astounding benefits on them in their everyday life. Not only will they learn a prestigious instrument, playing the piano also has a range of underlying advantages as well.
Boost Creativity
Learning the piano tingles the brain in such a way that your child develops a more creative mind. It also improves their reading ability, speech and their listening skills. Basically it sharpens the entire functioning of your child’s brain.
Strengthens Basic Etiquettes
By taking piano lessons children will learn how to devote their full concentration to a task and push themselves in order to learn something. It will also give them a sense of patience and discipline as learning how to play the piano can be time consuming and a lengthy process. They also develop better socializing skills than most children their age.
Get Better at Comprehending and Sensing Emotions
Learning how to play the piano strengthens your child’s ability to sense emotions. They are able to identify the slightest changes in tones due to their sharpened listening skills.
Makes them Smarter
By taking regular piano lessons your child is bound to get smarter and have an improved memory. Your child’s IQ will increase with just a few weeks of piano lessons as their brain will be extremely actively involved in deciphering how to play. This will prove extremely beneficial especially in the future when they are appearing for tests such as the SATs.
Handle Stress Better
If your child learns how to play the piano they will become a calmer individuals and have better control over their mind when it comes to stress or difficulties. Performing in public will also give them confidence and prepare them for future presentations and stressful moments such as interviews.
Now that we’ve convinced you that piano lessons for your kid are absolutely crucial. Here are 5 ways through which piano lessons for kids can be made easy.
1. Use Learning Time to Full Capacity
It’s not about the quantity of the lessons but the quality. Make each and every lesson extremely productive by having a set agenda of what you want to achieve in mind.
Ideally you could start each lesson with a warm up which could be a piece that is relatively easier or one that they already have a hang of and then move towards your goal for that lesson. That could be anywhere between mastering a bar to learning an entire new song.
While making each class constructive is important you also need to make sure that you aren’t pushing your kid too hard or being too strict with them. Understand that each child learns at his or her own pace so be patient and trust the process.
Set some time apart daily, even if it’s 10 minutes during which your child recalls what he learnt during his lessons and if the resources are available practices playing the piano.
You could even encourage them to go on the Internet and check out the short videos and guides available, which teach you how to play. This will further refine their skill and make them learn faster.
2. Make them as Entertaining and Fun as Possible
Do not portray piano lessons as a task that your child has to do. Instead make the lessons a source of enjoyment for them. Children tend to lose interest in a task if they don’t find joy in it hence if you want your child to learn the piano well the most important way is to make it fun for them.
Here are ways through which you can make piano lessons fun for your kid.
Incorporate their Favorite Songs
Are they obsessed with Baby Shark or Let it Go? Make it a part of their learning routine. They would be absolutely thrilled to learn how to play their favorite song on the piano which is why it would be a brilliant idea to start with that. Once they’ve developed the first spark of interest, it gets easier along the way.
Involve their Toys
Having their favorite toy sitting on the keyboard will add a bit of ease and comfort for your kid when they are learning how to play the piano. They are also likely to take more interest in playing with their favorite toy beside them. You can even involve the toy in the learning process by getting it to applaud every time your child plays.
Let them Explore
Trigger their curiosities and give them the freedom of exploration. Let them witness the anatomy of the piano and see what how the hammers move when they play. Small thing like this fascinate children and can be a cause of being drawn towards learning how to play.
Incorporate Fun Activities During Piano Playing
A fun and unique way to teach your child how the sounds of a piano change is by putting in different materials across the strings such as paper or aluminum foil. This will engage your child and make them more entertained when learning. You can even lay out pencils across the strings and let your child watch them jump when they play. These small activities will make lessons a lot more fun for your child and they will learn a lot more enthusiastically.
Make Stuff Up
One of the best ways to make your child learn is when they themselves are actively involved in it and are not just sitting and memorizing notes. Create a song with them and give them the freedom to decide how to go about it. Whether it will be a fast or slow song? A sad or happy one? What story will it tell? This will teach your child the differences between major and minor notes without it being a dull and boring lesson.
3. Teach them the Musical Alphabet
One of the most necessary steps in order to know how to play the piano is learning the music alphabet. This step can be difficult even for adults but with the right technique you can easily teach them to your child.
You can teach your kids the musical alphabet by using flashcards. You’ll need 7 flashcards labeled from A to G and make sure that they can identify all of them. You can then start by singing ABC and point at each alphabet as you sing. Add in alphabets and start going back and forth. Involve them in singing both forward and backward.
Your aim is to be able to teach your child how to sing both forwards and backwards without having to look at the flashcards. This will teach them how to read notes and keys of the piano.
4. Teach them the Notes
Another important step when learning to play the piano is being able to identify the notes. You need to start by teaching them how to identify the different patterns such as the two types of black key groupings. Let them identify these groupings themselves until they understand the pattern behind them.
After they have an understanding of patterns start by teaching them how to play one note at a time. The easiest note to start from is C. Make them identify each C in the keyboard by reminding them that it is the white key before two black ones.
Slowly start with B and D. Once they get an understanding of these three they will eventually be able to recognize the rest as well.
To even further strengthen their understanding of the different notes, you can make your child create their own music book where they can make notes and get more involved in the learning process. You can even give them tasks to write basic notes such as treble clef or bass clef.
5. Conduct Rhythm, Technique and Ear Training Activities
These three activities when incorporated in your child’s piano learning process will not only make the lessons extremely effective but also easier and faster for you child.
Rhythm Activities
This is necessary activity in order teach your child how to understand beats. This to can be taught using flashcards to help them in identifying the notes and holding beats. You can either add words that match the length of the beat to the flashcards or you could use the clapping technique (number of claps denotes number of beats).
Technique Activities
The first step is to make sure that your child can identify their right and left hand. Then name their fingers for them. Initially you can actually use a marker to label their fingers, this will make the concept of labels stick to their memory.
Once that is done make them play important keys with both their hands and then encourage them to place all their fingers on the piano and involve both hands.
Ear Training Activities
This step is done to ensure that your child can identify the difference between high notes and low notes. You can use examples of animals and the sounds they make to make them understand better. Play a key and ask them what sound they think it makes and correct them if they’re wrong by humming along it’s sound.
Conclusion
Through these simple steps you can provide easy piano lessons for your kids along with making it an extremely fun process with them. This learning experience can be a refreshing and exciting escape from their every day school life.