Piano Man

At the start of this term Daniel started piano lessons at school on a Thursday morning. He has shown an interest in piano and James and I both believe that piano forms the basics for a knowledge of music that can lead to him learning and understanding different instruments so we were keen to have him start. Lessons before school each week seemed to make sense because it was easy to do and one less afternoon. 

His first lesson focussed on middle C. He is learning on keyboard at school but is playing on our piano at home (now that it is tuned nicely). He was very proud of himself and very focussed on his counting as he played middle C.

It was great to see how he had improved his playing by practicing through the week.

The 2nd week he came home and I was expecting that he would have played the 2nd lesson in his book. Instead his teacher taught him Mary Had A Little Lamb. Interesting considering he only had learnt Middle C but lets go with it. Daniel was familiar with the song so that did help him. I sat with him and helped him with his fingers and which notes to play - singing the notes as he went - but he got there.

It was cute to see the kids making a band that played 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'. Daniel is very proud of his piano playing. 

Unfortunately we aren't too pleased with his piano lessons. He isn't getting taught much, he is mostly playing by ear. His teachers aren't really teaching him, I am sitting down with him on Fridays and going through the song with him - part of the time with one or both of us in tears. He is playing songs not knowing which notes to actually play or guessing what he should play. He is also playing music not knowing how long the notes are held, how long to pause, which hand to play, etc. He is writing the notes for each piece, but the teacher isn't checking that he has written them correctly. And they are jumping all around the book. They also don't revisit the songs they learnt last week. How is that helpful? It just isn't great from our perspective. So yeah. We won't be continuing the lessons because we just aren't happy and we don't want Daniel to get into bad habits. 

Instead I am hoping to teach him at least the rest of the book. We will see how we go. Hopefully it will be fun, and we will save some money by me doing it. I'm sad that the lessons at school didn't work out because of the ease of it for me, but oh well. That's just how it is.

On the other hand, I am so proud of Daniel and how he has risen to each lesson. He has listened to my advice and applied it making him a better piano player. I love how pleased he is after he has played the songs. I love seeing him grow in confidence and skill through practicing the songs and I love that he enjoys playing. We were at a friends house last week and they had a little keyboard there. Daniel got the keyboard and brought it to me and then played us Mary Had A Little Lamb and he did pretty well. I see him moving his fingers like he's playing the piano a lot of the time, even though he isn't sitting at the piano. Music is in his blood. Can't wait to see where he goes.