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xandra wrote:I am a piano teacher and I normally teach 5 year olds upwards, however, I am going to be teaching a 3 year old to play piano, does anyone have any suggestions/ tips on good books or approaches to teaching children as young as this?

Thanks

Hello there.

I am teaching a three year old.
I usually take them from 4 years old, but this mother was particularly keen for her son to come for lessons, so I agreed to see him. He is an unusually bright little boy and we are progressing slowly.

I teach the Lisa Childs piano books to small children (they are written for this age group in particular and the school has had spectacular success with them over a long period of time) which included stickers and colour etc, it makes it easier and more fun for them to pick up a few tunes early on while they are learning to read music.

You can read more about this at my website :
http://www.poppyspianofortescchool.co.uk

A link to the contact number for the piano school that wrote the books is also available on my site.

I find my student is good for 20 mins concentration, so inbetween playing and learning to read the notes, we have little rhythm games with small percussion instruments which he really enjoys.

You also have to keep an eye as to if they want to use the loo ; )

Hope this is some help.
Any further questions, pelase do not hesitate to ask.

Good luck!

Poppy Gonzalez

Hello,

I know this is an old post, but stumbled upon it after searching for people teaching young children the piano. I would just like to bump the post up just incase anybody else is in this situation and looking to teach young children.

The Dogs and Birds range of books make learning fun for young children and they provide a unique and very successful learning experience. Dogs and Birds is a highly successful way to teach the piano to very young children, from ages 4 to 7. It uses animals to symbolize musical notes, for example Dog for D, Bird for B and Cat for C.

I hope that this post will provide useful to some members teaching on here. The website can be found at: http://www.dogsandbirds.co.uk.

Please take a look for further explanation and also to see what other teachers have to think about the books.

Kind Regards,

Hi, I'm a piano teacher in Castle Hill, Sydney Australia. I came across this forum while searching for teaching ideas for younger kids.

Since last year I've been teaching a few 3-4 year olds in individual piano lessons. I have found that using the KinderBach materials are great for aural training and preschool music theory, and the Piano Pals characters and songs are an engaging bonus.

Also, there is a method called We Hear and Play by Taneda, which emphasises the attainment of absolute pitch (or perfect pitch) using coloured notes. While I think the perfect pitch aspect is useful, I find that using coloured notes and keys very helpful for the young child. By combining the two methods, the students get a more rounded music education than only using one. Each method has a variety of activities to do, which is great for attention span of young children. If they get tired of being at the piano, it's easy to just switch activities because there's always something else useful to do anyway.

As for extra practice in writing, the Junior Musicianship Book from the Fun Music Company is a great resource because you can buy it as a pdf and print as many copies as you need. Alternatively, you could print it as a book and sell it. The Hal Leonard Notespeller Book 1 is also lots of fun as a preparation for note reading on the staff, even if you don't use the Hal Leonard Piano Method.

I have a website that explains in a little more detail what I do: http://www.preschoolpiano.weebly.com

If you want more info about me, my general piano teaching website is: http://enjoypiano.weebly.com