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I hear a lot of moms saying their child will work with someone else and not them. One friend is so mad she spends so much on a tutor because her son will listen to the tutor but not her.

I guess it depends on the child. My 2nd son is 3 now and will not work with me at all. I am hoping that changes later on. I dk though because my 1st son always would work with me. I have a feeling I will be paying a lot of money on a tutor for 2nd one !

By the way those bob books were great when they 1st start reading.

Thanks for all the useful info. I like switching the pieces around but her regular teacher gave us a list and specific instructions. We have a student teach her at the beach.

There is a reason for this. She has been playing quite complicated pieces. We have tried to make them "simpler" to start getting her to read the music but but they were never simple enough that she was interested enough to play them and could start at the beginning to read them.

So it was a plan to break her pattern of memorizing pieces by giving me simple enough pieces that have dynamics and polyphonics and work with her over the summer. And her reward is getting to go back to really complicated pieces she loves to play but get her to read the music while learning to play them.

And it really isn't that hard to get the basics of reading the music but she just wants to play something fun instead what we are working on. And although she can memorize amazing amounts of info when she wants to, getting her to remember Good Boys Do Fine Always seems very difficult. But I think her brain isn't letting her be so resistant to repition and by the end of July she will have it down. I was in the next room when she had her piano lesson today and the student/teacher was thrilled she actually looked up while playing. She told me that it is difficult to teach her because her memory is so good. Yes, how does that make sense? But she can memorize the piece before she has to read the music to play it.

And I would like to change the time of day. But...it is also a time when she needs to be out of the sun. And later on, there have been snacks shared, sometimes sugar filled, on the beach, which has its own challenges.

Ren

Ren - One thing to try is to shorten the session, or divide them in half and do 2 shorted sessions.

Another thing to try is to let her 'compete' with you to see who can learn the notes faster.

I think someone mentioned the idea of letting her practice by writing down a song she knows or has written herself. That might make more sense to her.

When you first mentioned sight reading I had a picture of learning the names of the letter, and associating where on the piano the various pictoral notes lived. But your description sounds different. If the job is mostly learning to identify the notes by name, my son showed me a great trick. His teacher held her left hand with the fingers slightly spread. The fingers then represented the lines of the staff. Then the teacher touched either the space between the fingers, or a finger and asked 'what letter is this?'

It might be even cooler if you could play a note on a small keyboard and asked your DD to point to the note on her hand, in addition to training of associating the position with a letter. Or your DD might enjoy 'playing' a song on her fingers as she sings along.

Even if you aren't the main teacher, you might find some part of it that could be a special activity between you and your dd - perhaps 'txtmessaging' on your fingers back and forth words that use the letters A through G by pointing to the fingers and spaces in between? (perhaps touch your palm to signify any letter H or beyond?) I haven't ever done this, so let me know if it works. I guess if you want it to work you might have to teacher her finger signing for letters H-Z.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

We had the exact same issue with memorization when my son was learning to read music. He'd play something and memorize it almost immediately. We found the following sight reading books.

http://www.mnmusicteachers.com/productdetail.php?id=10

2 things with this book. These are all one line pieces, so it's easy to say we're going to sight read one a day and that's it (my kid was not a fan of learning to read when playing by ear was so easy at the time). They are usually quite random notes. So they aren't in a nice tune like pattern that is easy to figure out. When I sensed he had memorized one, we'd just move onto the next one. By the time we had worked through the 4th book, he had moved on to reading all his music. Now to the point that we are working on a piece, we have to work on memorizing it.

Morning practices work well for us too. I'm not sure either of my kids could take a music practice after a morning of swimming. Sometimes things that take twice as long when they're tired!

My daughter (who is close in age to yours) starting having a horrible time practicing this summer! It was taking an hour or more to get 20-30 minutes worth of practice done. And much of that was perfectionist dramatics ("So hard", "I can't do it"). I had to lay out a incentive plan for her that's going to end in a $10 toy if she can get 100 beads on a string. I put a bead on if she does something without complaining or throwing herself on the floor. I get to remove one if she is unwilling to try something when asked. We had one excellent practice this morning!

Anyway, I know exactly where you're coming from, so if nothing else I'm sending sympathy. Summers can be hard!

Thanks for the ideas. The hand thing won't Grinity, though thanks for the idea, because what do you do with notes way above or below or sharps and flats?

I think we just have to move on with the pieces.

And I am keeping it short. 20 minutes. With 10 minutes of it being scales, to keep her hands moving. So it is not long. But still not easy.

Ren

Hi - Can't really think of much, and I don't know how much help I'll be since we're taking most of the summer off from piano! But I remember DS6's teacher covering his hands with a book when he wasn't looking at the notes. This helped to get him to look, anyway. Good luck! kimck -I like the bead idea; might have to steal that.

I go through this as well. I outsourced the sight reading - just can't deal. The occasional playing supervision is enough for me.

One thing I've noticed (but can never manage to implement) is that not only do I tend to sympathize with my children's reluctance to spend time playing piano, practicing math, writing, etc, but I don't enjoy it either (well, I enjoy the math, but not the other stuff). So I tend to try to push them to approach the tasks very efficiently so that "we" can achieve our goals quickly and be done. And this just doesn't work. But I can't help it! It's also a little difficult because with two kids close in age, one is at loose ends while I work with the other. In the past we had good results working on piano immediately following breakfast and before school, but I've been going into work earlier so this is no longer an option.

Sounds like you have just the one child and a fair amount of time on your hands, so I would suggest spending MORE time on this task. Make it quality time together and just hang out and talk about what you are doing.

It does sound like perhaps trying to follow the methodology prescribed by your daughter's teacher may be making it more difficult. Not that it's not the best, most efficient, approach, but it may not be the easiest and most pleasant for you and your daughter. I wuld be curious to hear what she is playing and what approach she takes to the regular practicing. Do you normally supervise her playing? Are you using the Suzuki method? I'm trying to understand if you are just working with her on sight reading or if you are working with her on her playing as well and if this is one activity or two?

DS9 is a big memorizer too. He just listens to a piece and can play it back perfectly. His piano instructor started playing a card game with him called Snap. I'm not sure how it's played, but it's kind of like speed with music notes on the cards. That has really helped him learn to read the notes and he enjoys the game. You could probably do something like Go Fish or Old Maid with music notes on the cards with your DD.

The other thing we do is we let him pick out a piece he wants to learn especially if it's above his level and then we give him a piece we want him to learn. So, right now he's learning the James Bond theme music that he chose and something else the teacher assigned. He enjoys the challenge of learning the harder piece he chose and will then be more compliant playing the "boring" piece the teacher chose at his level.

DD is in the "Russian" method. They look down on Suzuki. Interesting that I met a violinist who learned on Suzuki and said it was very hard for her to learn to read music in that method.

So the pieces she plays are in the Russian piano books. The easy pieces we have for this summer are in book 2. She does a lot of Studies. And I do supervise, otherwise, she would just play the way she wants to play, super fast, without regard to dynamics.

And I think we are getting over the hump. Yesterday, I went to the spa and her father worked with her and he said she had this "block" and then it was gone and everything went very easily and she remembered it like she had been doing it for years. So it was just mind over matter.

Ren

Not to get off topic, but I think this is a common misconception by teachers outside the Suzuki method. Not that there aren't bad Suzuki teachers out there not taking a balanced approach. But there are bad music teachers out there across the boards.

Both my kids take Suzuki. My kindy violinst started sight reading exercises a few months ago. My piano playing son does at least half his music from outside the Suzuki repertoire and learns everything with the music, two handed, sight reading. He has done theory classes and exams through his Suzuki teacher. Our music school encourages a balanced approach. String students do orchestra and sight reading classes from early ages.

That being said, I think there are some students who really resist working on the sight reading piece of it for whatever reason. I think the opportunities are there, but teachers can't force you to work on it. I grew up taking Suzuki violin in the 70's and 80's. I had no problem learning to read music for violin.