No tags yet.
Yesterday I spent 20 minutes playing with a spunky 2.5 year old at the piano. This far her lessons have consisted of recognizing middle C, different landmark notes on the piano, playing twinkle twinkle (following my finger) and singing the letter notes of the keys she plays and singing together and by herself.
Firstly, I love play-based learning, which is widely known for the success in Montessori schools. The idea of play-based learning is how I intend to root my lessons. Piano should be fun, no more scary Russian teachers getting mad if you play an incorrect note (that cannot only be my memory of RCM in elementary school).
We call it playing don't we? So, that's exactly what we should do - PLAY!
A game I play with this two-year old has no name, but is a conversation about how particular animals might sound if they were on the piano or playing the piano. It Induced a lot of giggling when she imagined a purple dog. So we started playing some lower notes and 'woofing' together. When we imagined a great big elephant at the piano we play the black keys very loudly and when I asked this sweet girl what a mouse might sound like her eyes lit up!
She sqeaked as if she saw a real mouse, exclaiming "It has a tail!!".
I responded with an excited squeak of my own and we scurried our fingers across the piano.
The best part about this game wasn't just that we were able to use the piano as a tool for communication, but that we were able to play with imaginary animals together. Coming up on three, two year olds can get chatty and I listened to all the different colours these animals might be, their names and sizes.I think it's important that when teaching improvisation at this kind of a young age to commit to (most) of the rules of improvisation yourself.
The first being "yes-and". I could have easily tried to explain that dogs aren't purple nor are mice pink, but that would have taken away from the fun we had. Instead, continuing with the story she created so that we could create something together!