Beginner Piano Lessons
I’ve been enjoying the new students I started teaching last month. This is the first time I’ve had brand new students with hardly any lesson experience, and they’re great!
There’s one 8- or 9-year-old girl with tiny little hands. She often forgets to put all of her fingers on the keys, usually opting for just the first three while letting the last two dangle. Once she needs them, she pauses, then suddenly remembers to lift them up.
Also, when learning chords, she has a hard time playing only fingers 1, 3, and 5. Her 2 & 4 are difficult to keep up, even though she’s knows what she wants to do. Rather than get frustrated, she just giggles at how weird the sensation is, then tries again and usually gets it.
I give her space to explore and hide my smiles.
A 7-year-old boy likes to explore all of the keyboard sounds. It’s good for kids to plunk around a lot when they’re starting, but that makes it difficult for me to get much done in a 45-minute lesson! So, I quietly turned off the amp, explaining that I used a secret teacher switch to turn off all the sound. That backfired – he was so perplexed that he devoted all of his attention to finding said switch. I finally got him to focus a bit, but by the end of the lesson he had figured it out anyway
*sigh*
Now he plunks around a bit, then turns off the switch himself when he’s ready. And he still learns a lot every day … although he doesn’t realize it.
Whether I’m actually getting the hang of it or am really about to run out of tricks, it is very enjoyable and the kids are making progress!