KC’s First Piano Lesson!

Well, we did it! I taught KC his first “official” piano lesson. There was a mixture of emotions on my end – a tiny bit of nervousness at the start! (“Will this idea fail miserably?” “I’ve never taught my own kid piano lessons before, what’s going to happen?”) But…the predominant feeling I felt while working with him was, “Wow, is my little buddy really old enough for a piano lesson? I can’t believe he’s growing up so fast!”

So, how did his first lesson go?

As you can tell from the picture above, KC loved his first piano lesson! He was eager and happy and engaged with what I was explaining and demonstrating to him throughout the time we worked together. A piano teacher mommy’s dream come true! Now…a few things I should mention.  This was by far not our first experience with music or even the piano. We have worked together countless times singing, listening to music, and exploring piano sounds together. (More on that in a future post!) So, there had been a lot of music prep to get to the point of this first lesson. I suppose what made this an “official” lesson was we started using a book.

As a big part of our lessons, I’m going to be using Irina Gorin’s “Tales of a Musical Journey”, which is filled with interesting stories that really draw kids in and help introduce different musical concepts. Once I have used the method book more I may do a more in depth review of the book.

We have these neat little character figurines that KC can fiddle with during the lesson. These characters also appear in the different stories in the book. We also use a little set of tiny animals which we will be using to learn the key letter names. (Cat is C, Deer is D, Eagle is E, etc.)

For our first lesson, here are some of the activities we did:

• Filled out an About Me” section of his book
• I introduced the characters who will be in the stories of our book
• Talked about the difference between Upright Pianos & Grand Pianos
• Showed him the inside of the Grand Piano – he loved seeing how the hammers hit the strings!
• Talked about how to sit properly at the piano (And I realized we needed to purchase a Piano Pedal Extender for KC’s feet to be comfortable!)
• Played low, middle, and high sounds
• Introduced the animal critters
• Played around on the keys in between activities

KC’s piano lessons are going to be different in many ways from the lessons I teach to other children. For one thing, being KC’s mommy, I know him so well. I can tailor the lesson a little more to suit what I know he already knows about music. Another aspect that is much different about our lessons is, since I see KC every day, we can have multiple lessons a week. This means we might take 10 minutes one day, 20 minutes the next day, and so on.  I can spend much longer on certain activities than I normally have time for with my other music students. Without time constraints of my typical lessons, I am more able to “follow his lead” as far as what he is interested in at the moment, and find times during our day when he is most receptive to reviewing a concept or learning something new. Also, I’ve started teaching him, but Philip will likely teach many of his lessons as well.

KC is only 3, and we are not in a huge hurry to have him being a concert pianist by the age of 5. Our goal with his lessons right now is to have fun, and start showing him things about music he is already interested in.  Stay tuned, I can’t wait to share updates with you as we learn more!