What timing. My DS4 just started piano lessons today -- took me a year or so to find a teacher who'd agree to a young student. First time went pretty well. Teacher is using a book called Music for Little Mozarts. Kind of a haughty title but the books are right on for my son. Story of a bear and a mouse, the first part has a story where they introduce the characters and say the bear likes to play low notes, mouse high notes, etc. One can even order stuffed versions of the characters that the child can use as props (we didn't, we are pretending one hand is the bear and the other the mouse). As the book goes on the bear and mouse learn the names of the keys, find black keys in groups of 2 or 3, etc. Has a accompanying work book which is coloring type activities. Of the two or three other starter books I looked at this set seemed the most engaging. There are probably others though.
I really like that it's geared towards understanding the terminology and then reading music and starts right in with names of keys and how to find them. My son is going to be lag in ability to use all the fingers correctly, his fine motor skills are fine for his age but not precocious, so in the meantime he can feel confident in the more cerebral part.
If the teacher hasn't worked with preschooler age before maybe just keep it short and positive especially the first couple times, and have some ideas of things to do that are not physically at the keyboard. The teacher DS had today had a matching game DS played in the middle, pictures of musical type things to match up, that was a great idea as nap-time DS can't sit patiently at a keyboard for 30 minutes. We also stood and stamped our feet to the beat to something. And at the end learned how to bow. So the actual time focussed on the keyboard wasn't a strain for him. Today for the first class DS mainly showed he could find low and high notes, found groups of 2 black keys, and banged on a key (supposedly in time to) the teacher saying a little song.
We have done a Kindermusik or Musicgarten/Music Together type class back a year or two ago and it wasn't great. There was no depth to it and it moved so quickly from thing to thing there was no time to enjoy the more interesting parts. DS didn't find very much fun about being told to shake a shaker or bang with a drumstick on a wood block inbetween walking around in a large circle. It was more about following group directions and sitting in a circle. Disclaimer is of course I'm sure they are all different but so far I'm sold on the one on one lessons.
Polly
