A piano
is a good gathering place for preschool children, for piano lessons or
just for musical fun.
In fact,
you would do well to make your music lesson or class into a series of
fun preschool activities centered around the piano, rather than
pedagogical lectures. For
example, rather than try to read music, you might explore the pattern
of two and three black keys on the piano. That skill, finding one’s
way around the black keys, is a precursor to the skill of reading
music.
Just
playing a happy tune, ala Chico
Marx, draws kids into the warm sound of a piano, and excites them,
creating interest.
Try
these fun activities with a piano:
-
March and tramp around
the room to a jaunty beat.
-
Now make the music
dark and mysterious, and have the kids pretend they are clouds and
rainstorms.
-
Play a glissando up
and ask if it was up or down.
-
Play a glissando down
and ask if it was up or down.
At this
point you might try to ask about the two black keys. Ask if anyone
sees a pattern of black keys. Let them come up to the piano and look.
Now tell
them that the most important note is called “C,” and it is to the
left of the two black keys.
Of
course, now you must fight a separate battle, which is the difference
between left and right, a skill not yet mastered by many preschoolers.
Finding
Middle C actually helps a lot of preschoolers strengthen the
left/right difference, because it attaches an external value to it,
the ability to make a certain musical sound, thus making it more fun.
Now have
the kids find the groups of two and three black keys, and make up
games distinguishing them, such as, “Is this the group of three or
the group of two?”
Adopt
the manner of a carnival barker and make them find the answer more and
more quickly. I always say, “Hurry up there kid, we got others
waiting, y’know.”
Kids
love a theatrical conceit.
Now that
you’ve got them interested, here are more activities:
-
Take their index
finger and slowly play up (to the right) from Middle C. Explain
that it’s like a stairway. “Who’d like to go up the Piano
Stairway?” Then let them do it themselves. If they go crazy and
smash the keys, gently take their hand and guide them again.
-
Have them press down
any group of two black keys.
-
Have them press down
any group of three black keys.
The
standard musical games work well to relieve the tension:
-
Musical Chairs
-
Name That Tune
You
can also try making up a musical drama, and divide the kids into
characters. Even if chaos ensues, and it will, it will be good musical
fun.
If
things get crazy, play “Rockabye Baby” and start snoring. They
will get the point.
See also PRESCHOOL PIANO PACKAGE
By John
Aschenbrenner Copyright 2008 Walden Pond Press All Rights Reserved
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