Sears Family

Hello,

I posted earlier about my ds (6, almost 7) wanting to read but not being ready yet. The advice to liken it to learning to ride a bike was great - he happens to be exceptionally talented in sports, and has seen others struggle with sports and then succeed with much more effort/time than he has had to put forth. Both him and I have become more patient and accepting of his learning to read at his own pace.

He wants to learn how to play the piano, and he specifically wants me to help him. I don't know what to do - I feel a big block as to how to help him - not because I don't know piano (I have my grade 8 conservatory and grade 2 theory), but I think because I'm in the "schooling' mode from my own years and years of lessons.

We have done piano in the past, in a schooly kind of way, where I've set up fun exercises for them to do, and we've tried to do something every day. Although I always initiated the "lessons", he was always keen about everything I did, where his sister disliked most of it. Through the mixed responses I got, and my inner passion for unschooling (which obviously was not shining through with forcing her when she was losing interest) the "lessons' would drop off and we'd stop doing them. My ds doesn't complain, but if I ask him about it, he wants me to teach him and doesn't want another piano teacher.

I'm so stuck in how I learned how to play piano (lesson once a week, practise every day, learn notes/scales/chords/read music.....) that I'm not sure how to unschool through this. I mean - how to help him if he wants to play and learn one day, and then leave it for a few days, then play for a few days, and then leave it for a few weeks. What materials/suggestions/path can I take without turning it into lessons we'll both not enjoy?

Arrghh - I'm quite stuck, and looking forward to any suggestions!

Michele


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 3/17/2005 9:26:47 AM Mountain Standard Time,
brewstersears@... writes:

He wants to learn how to play the piano, and he specifically wants me to
help him. I don't know what to do - I feel a big block as to how to help him -
not because I don't know piano (I have my grade 8 conservatory and grade 2
theory), but I think because I'm in the "schooling' mode from my own years and
years of lessons.



Can you make up games, like call a note name and both of you play as many of
those as you can? "B flat!" and race for the Bflats you can reach? Maybe
add another one, so you're doing chords, like twister.

What about just playing chords or basslines to something they play by ear?
If they can do a melody, you could improvise another part. If you're
accustomed to playing always formally by sheetmusic and they see you improvising, it
might make improvising and playing by ear seem more legitimate. I know I
suffered from that prejudice as a kid. I was really PLAYING piano because I
was reading music, but my mom, who was "just" playing tunes and chords, was
just playing "with" the piano (I thought) and not really playing it. There's
a schoolish prejudice.

I started playing piano at five, and didn't start school until a year later,
so I read music before I read English, and that has made it really hard for
me to explain music reading now. I don't really remember learning it. I
just see it and know, and when I try to break it down I usually leave out
something important.

Maybe you could play things like "name that tune" with them. Holly and I
were doing that the other night. She was in a rocking chair and I was at the
piano, so it wasn't Holly learning piano, but it was still fun. I had a
Sesame Street songbook and would play two, then three, then four notes until she
could guess the song. Maybe they could copy each set of notes you played, and
you add a note and they copy that and then soon they recognize the song.

I have done that with kids, just copying a bit they played, or singing
something they sang, and then we turn it around and they copy me. It helps them
know how the instrument (keyboard or voice) works, to find intervals, even
without the names of those things being used.

-=-how to help him if he wants to play and learn one day, and then leave it
for a few days, then play for a few days, and then leave it for a few weeks.
-=-

I think quitting for a while and then coming back is fine and natural.
Piano teachers traditionally want their students to advance quickly so that the
parents are happy with the cost of the lessons, and so they can show off how
much more advanced their students are than some other rival teacher's.
(Traditionally in the for-centuries-passed way.)

_http://sandradodd.com/certificate_ (http://sandradodd.com/certificate)
Certificate of empowerment.
This came up in e-mail to a friend who's not involved in unschooling,
because of a joke that was going around among friends of ours about finishing
things you start:




> > Subject: inner peace
>
>
> I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me - and
> we all could use more calm in our lives. By following the simple
> advice I heard on a
> Dr. Phil show, I have finally have found inner peace.
>
> Dr. Phil proclaimed the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all
> the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see
> things I started and hadn't finished; and, before leaving the house
> this morning I finished off a
> bottle of Merlot, a bottle of White Zinfandel, a bottle of Baileys, a
> bottle
> of Kahlua, a package of Oreos, the remainder of both Prozac and Valium
> prescriptions, the rest of the cheesecake, some Saltines and a box of
> Chocolates.
>
> You have no idea how freakin' good I feel.
>
> Please pass this on to those you feel are in need of inner peace.



----------------

I think a lot of people hold in a lot of pain and regret about not finishing
things. I know my husband does. Every unfinished project since his
childhood is on a list of things he should feel bad about. Poor guy. I told him if
he was having fun and learned something, it was fine that he put it down
when he wanted to. When he quit he WAS done, maybe. <g> But with piano,
quitting for a while isn't forever. Picking up again isn't starting from scratch.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

Perhaps you could look into the Suzuki method- I know John Holt highly
recommended it. Or let your son set himself a schedule for lessons and practice if
that's what he wants. Then you're not enforcing the teaching, you'd simply be
an expert he's choosing to study with. If he is not resistant to your style
of teaching, go with it, I say. But leave out the coercions, rewards, and
imposed schedules. Ask him what he wants to get out of playing the piano, and
teach the tools he needs to reach that goal.


Kirsten (4/72)- mom to 3 sons: Skyler (5/96), Aric (5/97), and Sawyer (3/99),
wife to Carl (5/72)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Robin

--- In [email protected], "Sears Family" <brewstersears@s...> wrote:
> I'm so stuck in how I learned how to play piano (lesson once a week, practise every day, learn notes/scales/chords/read music.....) that I'm not sure how to unschool through this. I mean - how to help him if he wants to play and learn one day, and then leave it for a few days, then play for a few days, and then leave it for a few weeks. What materials/suggestions/path can I take without turning it into lessons we'll both not enjoy?
>
> Arrghh - I'm quite stuck, and looking forward to any suggestions!
>


My son (8) asked about 4 months ago for me to help him learn to play the piano. I got some index cards and wrote the scales on it. Then I got some colored stickers and put them on the keyboard. On my scales, I wrote the color of the note beneath each note on the scale. I had also bought, a while back, a Christmas song book that was aimed at beginning pianists. So on some later day, I sat down with my son and the book and went through one of the songs, showing him where the notes were on the scale that I had drawn and on the music. Then I left to go swimming. When I came back, he could read the treble clef in the music and was busy teaching himself songs in the book. As he went along over the next few days, he would ask me other questions - what is this 4/4 at the beginning? What is this funny symbol (a flat)? I explained about key signatures, time signatures, sharps and flats. One day I mentioned scales and showed him how to play the C scale and told him that many pianists warm up on scales and use them for finger dexterity and strength. For awhile, he practiced that scale every day until he could play it with both hands together. Then he asked me to teach him the D scale, and now he's working on E. He still isn't interested in learning the left hand, but he has learned some chords and sometimes plays those with a song.

Basically, he's picking it up in fits and starts, he plays when he wants to and doesn't play when he doesn't want to - sometimes 2 hours a day, sometimes not at all for days. I bought some more books of music (we were all getting tired of the Christmas songs) and he has been going through some of the songs in those. This is the way he loves to learn things - totally self-directed and at his own pace.

My daughter is much more driven. She wanted to play the violin and asked for Suzuki lessons at age 3 (after meeting a homeschooling mom who is a Suzuki teacher). She has been taking Suzuki for 2 years, which is quite structured. I started taking lessons along with her. But she also likes to learn fiddle tunes on the side, so I'll help her pick out the notes to fiddle songs that I'm playing. She practices every day and works on the songs in a very particular order. But this is the kind of thing she loves - she really wants to excel and to learn new stuff quickly and she has an exceptional ear and is very disappointed if something doesn't sound right to her. So the fits-and-starts approach really doesn't work for her and she has chosen something different.

I think really, you just need to honor how the kid wants to learn and find ways to meet whatever their immediate need is. Give them lots of information about the different ways available to them, talk to them about their goals, and find ways to help them achieve them.

Blue Skies,
-Robin-
Radmama to Asa (5) and Mackenzie (8)

Kids are God; Pay attention. - Viggo Mortensen

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

Pam Sorooshian's middle daughter learned to read music on her own,
gradually, over years. I'd thought she was taking lessons, because every time I went
to their house (every year or two <g>) there was a slightly harder book open
on the piano. Pam said she was tired of hearing the same stuff, so the next
time I visited her, I brought her a copy of Clementi sonatinas. She opened
it up and started sightreading them, both hands together. Maybe not a big
deal, but when I asked Pam quietly to tell me how long she'd been taking
lessons, Pam said she'd never had a lesson.

Roxana was 13 or 14 then, I think.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pam Sorooshian

She learned to play by playing - by starting with picking out songs
with one finger - figuring out what the notes were. She played songs
she knew, so the timing was just out of her own head. But she noticed
that the timing went with the type of note. At some point she asked me
to explain the key signature and I did. And so on - it just happened
gradually, over years. She took some violin lessons for a while - maybe
3 months - in there somewhere.

At 16 she took a piano class at the community college - it was the
beginning class and way below her playing level. But she learned a bit
of terminology that had never come up.

She plays as well as she wants to play - she's primarily a singer, but
fooling around with learning to play piano has given her that as a tool
to help her with difficult vocal pieces and nothing beats playing a bit
of piano to help develop a good grasp of music theory.

-pam

On Mar 17, 2005, at 10:10 AM, SandraDodd@... wrote:

> Maybe not a big
> deal, but when I asked Pam quietly to tell me how long she'd been
> taking
> lessons, Pam said she'd never had a lesson.

julie w

Sears Family wrote:

>
> I'm so stuck in how I learned how to play piano (lesson once a week,
> practise every day, learn notes/scales/chords/read music.....) that
> I'm not sure how to unschool through this. I mean - how to help him
> if he wants to play and learn one day, and then leave it for a few
> days, then play for a few days, and then leave it for a few weeks.
> What materials/suggestions/path can I take without turning it into
> lessons we'll both not enjoy?
>
> Arrghh - I'm quite stuck, and looking forward to any suggestions!
>
> Michele

Not a music gal here, but does he want to "learn" to play (note reading
and all that) or does he want to be able to just play. Maybe you could
ask him what songs he wants to be able to play and just help him
memorize how to play those----

>
>


--
Julie W
http://jwoolfolk.typepad.com/theothermother/




--
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Diana Tashjian

I mostly taught myself how to read music and play on the piano (not
proficiently) but when I finally, as an adult, took piano lessons, I
found out that there are supposed to be specific ways to do fingering.
Did your daughter teach herself that part, too? I'm finding that
that's the hardest part: knowing how to do the fingering...

Thanks,
Diana Tashjian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pam Sorooshian" <pamsoroosh@...>

> She learned to play by playing - by starting with picking out songs
> with one finger - figuring out what the notes were. She played songs
> she knew, so the timing was just out of her own head. But she
noticed
> that the timing went with the type of note. At some point she asked
me
> to explain the key signature and I did. And so on - it just happened
> gradually, over years. She took some violin lessons for a while -
maybe
> 3 months - in there somewhere.
>
> At 16 she took a piano class at the community college - it was the
> beginning class and way below her playing level. But she learned a
bit
> of terminology that had never come up.
>
> She plays as well as she wants to play - she's primarily a singer,
but
> fooling around with learning to play piano has given her that as a
tool
> to help her with difficult vocal pieces and nothing beats playing a
bit
> of piano to help develop a good grasp of music theory.

<snip>

Pam Sorooshian

On Mar 18, 2005, at 6:58 AM, Diana Tashjian wrote:

> I mostly taught myself how to read music and play on the piano (not
> proficiently) but when I finally, as an adult, took piano lessons, I
> found out that there are supposed to be specific ways to do fingering.
> Did your daughter teach herself that part, too? I'm finding that
> that's the hardest part: knowing how to do the fingering...

Like I said, she recently took a piano course at the college - she
found it super easy, but worthwhile because there were a few things she
hadn't known. Fingering could have been part of that, I don't know. But
none of it was hard - she liked it.

-pam

bunsofaluminum

What I did with my oldest girl was to make a poster board "keyboard"
with Middle C marked, so she could line up the keys. That was at the
bottom. Across the top, I drew music lines, with notes corresponding
to each key. IOW, the Middle C was labelled, and the note was also
directly over the Middle C "key." My daughter taught herself how to
read notes with this, and that's all the further she went.

She can read well enough to play simple pieces, but she isn't
interested enough in it to learn the bass clef, and usually only
learns the first few measures of any given piece.

My other kids have expressed no interest in piano, but my 10 year old
wants to learn guitar, which we'll be pursuing this year.

If your son really wants to learn, he'll sit himself down and
practice. And, hey, he could be like me: learning how to read music
now, and leaving it for a time, then picking it back up again in the
future. If it's really interesting to him, he'll spend time at it.

blessings, HeidiC

--- In [email protected], "Robin" <tri_mom@c...>
wrote:
> --- In [email protected], "Sears Family"
<brewstersears@s...> wrote:
> > I'm so stuck in how I learned how to play piano (lesson once a
week, practise every day, learn notes/scales/chords/read music.....)
that I'm not sure how to unschool through this. I mean - how to help
him if he wants to play and learn one day, and then leave it for a
few days, then play for a few days, and then leave it for a few
weeks. What materials/suggestions/path can I take without turning
it into lessons we'll both not enjoy?
> >
> > Arrghh - I'm quite stuck, and looking forward to any suggestions!
> >
>
>
> My son (8) asked about 4 months ago for me to help him learn to
play the piano. I got some index cards and wrote the scales on it.
Then I got some colored stickers and put them on the keyboard. On my
scales, I wrote the color of the note beneath each note on the scale.
I had also bought, a while back, a Christmas song book that was aimed
at beginning pianists. So on some later day, I sat down with my son
and the book and went through one of the songs, showing him where the
notes were on the scale that I had drawn and on the music. Then I
left to go swimming. When I came back, he could read the treble clef
in the music and was busy teaching himself songs in the book. As he
went along over the next few days, he would ask me other questions -
what is this 4/4 at the beginning? What is this funny symbol (a
flat)? I explained about key signatures, time signatures, sharps and
flats. One day I mentioned scales and showed him how to play the C
scale and told him that many pianists warm up on scales and use them
for finger dexterity and strength. For awhile, he practiced that
scale every day until he could play it with both hands together. Then
he asked me to teach him the D scale, and now he's working on E. He
still isn't interested in learning the left hand, but he has learned
some chords and sometimes plays those with a song.
>
> Basically, he's picking it up in fits and starts, he plays when he
wants to and doesn't play when he doesn't want to - sometimes 2 hours
a day, sometimes not at all for days. I bought some more books of
music (we were all getting tired of the Christmas songs) and he has
been going through some of the songs in those. This is the way he
loves to learn things - totally self-directed and at his own pace.
>
> My daughter is much more driven. She wanted to play the violin and
asked for Suzuki lessons at age 3 (after meeting a homeschooling mom
who is a Suzuki teacher). She has been taking Suzuki for 2 years,
which is quite structured. I started taking lessons along with her.
But she also likes to learn fiddle tunes on the side, so I'll help
her pick out the notes to fiddle songs that I'm playing. She
practices every day and works on the songs in a very particular
order. But this is the kind of thing she loves - she really wants to
excel and to learn new stuff quickly and she has an exceptional ear
and is very disappointed if something doesn't sound right to her. So
the fits-and-starts approach really doesn't work for her and she has
chosen something different.
>
> I think really, you just need to honor how the kid wants to learn
and find ways to meet whatever their immediate need is. Give them
lots of information about the different ways available to them, talk
to them about their goals, and find ways to help them achieve them.
>
> Blue Skies,
> -Robin-
> Radmama to Asa (5) and Mackenzie (8)
>
> Kids are God; Pay attention. - Viggo Mortensen
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]