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Preschool Prodigies
LESSONS FOR THE YOUNG MUSICIAN
Get your Young Musician started today!
So you've got a Young Musician in your house and you want to get him/her started on some fun, at-home, musical activities today. Great!
Before you get started, you want to be aware that in teaching a Young Musician, there are two big areas of focus.
1. Rhythm
Rhythm is a difficult concept to teach children. Many children seem to simply have it, while others seem to not have it all. Either way, don't worry, we have the tools to help you bring a sense of rhythm to your child.
Our main goals with teaching children rhythm are...
1. Playing a steady beat or pulse, much like the way the second hand of a clock ticks in a constant predictable rhythmic pattern.
2. Playing different divisions of that pulse (i.e., twice as fast, twice as slow, etc).
To start your child on the road to both these goals, use our free rhythm lesson video below.
Sweet Beets 1 - Beet and Cherry Rhythm Lesson
In the video, the beet character represents one quarter note, while the two cherries represent two eighth-notes (which together equal the length of one quarter note).
While this video uses fruits to create a pattern, there are many words or syllables that you can use in a call-and-response fashion to achieve the same purpose. The original version of Sweet Beets used the Kodaly syllables, Ta and Ti-Ti instead of Beet and Cherry. You can write your own version about bugs (Ant Ant Spi-der Ant), clothes (Shoe Shoe T-shirt Shoe), or anything! Allow your child to be creative.
For now, all that is important is that your child is tapping (or clapping) along with the pulse and trying to tap, clap, or sing along with the call-and-response sections.
If you would like to receive more info about rhythm education for your child, sign up on our e-mail list and we'll e-mail you the PDF and audio versions of Sweet Beets, as well as keep you updated about upcoming video lessons.
Mary Had a Little Lamb
2. Pitch - When we talk about pitch, we're talking about how high or low a note sounds; more specifically, we're talking about the frequency of the sound's vibration and the name for that note (i.e., 440 is an A, 261.6 is Middle C, etc.).
If that sounds complicated, don't worry. For most of our Young Musician lessons, we use matched colors and letters to easily identify each note. This color system will become second nature to your Young Musician, even after just a few weeks of practice!
Above is a free copy of our version of Mary Had A Little Lamb. It is a good first lesson in pitch for two reasons: 1. it only uses the first three notes of a major scale and 2. the tune is widely known and easy to remember. Our sheet music is designed mainly for Desk Bells, hence the bell-looking characters and notes.
The colors we use in our lessons come from the Chromanotes (TM) system. There are a ton of great instruments and resources from Chromanotes, Boomwhackers, and Whacky Percussion, that many schools across the world are using in early music education. We've chosen to create our lessons around these colors in an effort to make our lessons more widely accesible and color-consistent with many music classrooms.
To color code your piano, you can either order the stickers shown below or simply use masking tape and marker!
Tips for Using Preschool Prodigies Sheet Music
1. The blank stars are to be filled in each time you and your child practice the piece. We want to encourage practicing, not perfection, in these early years, so let your child color in one start every time they complete the tune. Draw more stars if you'd like!!
2. The dotted lines seperate each measure and measure numbers can be found in the top left of each box. For a simple sequencing activity, or to cut the song into smaller, more managable visuals, cut along the dotted lines to seperate each measure.
3. The "Shh" element is there to teach the child the feeling of NOT PLAYING a note. For many reasons, beginning musicians tend to struggle with rhythm and with note values/length. For that reason, we only used quarter notes in all of our beginner music, which keps the pulse and timing of the notes consistent. Each bell gets as much time as each other bell which gets as much time as each *Shh*.
Thank You!
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! You've done your child a huge favor by familiarizing yourself with some of these concepts. If you'd like to receive more information on rhythm and pitch training, a free MP3 of Sweet Beets, and more Young Musician sheet music, please join our e-mail list!
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