Your first week with Hiner Method (Soft Mozart)
The goal of this week:
- Get familiar with "Surprise" symphony by Haydn
- Learn how to say the order of notes from DO to DO forward.
- Learn to sing the scale - "C Major" with a song-chant Note-Alphabet.
- Learn how to find images "Door," "Rain" etc. using their full names.
- Learn piano geography from Do to Do by pressing the keys with index finger.
- Learn how to call the fingers of the right hand notes and try to find each finger on a piano (with an adult)
- Learn how to press and hold thumb on 'Do' with the right hand.
- Learn to play Guess Key.
Files for this week:
- Soft Mozart software.
- Cards with notes names
- Music Alphabet Song-chant (1 track)
- Piano key guides. Learning how to place them here
- Picture to print: learning the names of our fingers
- Book 'What is music and what is noise'
What to do first:
- If you don't have piano key stickers for your baby, order them here!
- Download and install the software
- Download piano key guides and learn how to place them behind the keys.
- Download Flash cards and cut them with scissors.
- Learn how to open the Guess Key Module
We recommend starting introducing classical pieces through playing them for your preschoolers on piano/keyboard with Gentle Piano first. Parents have to learn it using Right, Left and/or Both hands with child present or participating in piece learning/singing Solfeggio/performing.
After ‘hand on’ experience the same piece should be presented as original with the help of CD, You Tube, iTunes and other listening devices. We will provide you with the sample links here, in our curriculum for your convenience, but feel free to brows different interpretations of the same piece.
Movements, dancing, ‘conducting’, loosing attention during the listening to original version is appreciated. You don’t have to push ‘just listening’ – a child has to do something happy and enjoyable while the music lasts.
The piece should be presented to a child during the entire 4 – 4,5 weeks segment of curriculum on different occasions. The structure (playing a piece 1-2 times a day) and spontaneity should be combined.
Every time before or after the piece is being played the name of it and name of composer should be announced.
If the piece is stimulating and exciting we recommend listening to it 1-2 hours before nap or night sleep. If the piece is soft and smoothing, it may be presented to a child, when he/she starts resting and about to sleep.
Every piece of this list after initial introduction during 4-4.5 week segment should be played occasionally with new pieces of the curriculum. It is important to keep all the music in mind and be able to differentiate one piece from another.
Gentle Piano. Favorite Classics Primer. Joseph Haydn ‘Surprise Symphony’.
Teach your baby to play a little segment or entire piece with the right or left hand. Keep listening the piece later, when working on orthers. It is very important to be able to recognize each piece by its name and differenciate them.
The sample of the orchestra version of the piece could be found on You Tube as Symphony # 94 (2nd part) – for instance.
Music Alphabet (couple of minutes a day)
What is Music Alphabet? This is the music theory foundation that you and your baby can learn by saying. Don't be afraid! Your child and you will learn Music Alphabet sequences very quickly with the help of your echoic memory.
What is that for and what benefits will give you I described in my book:
Learning how to sing Music Alphabet from Do. You can even dance during this activity!
Start you Alphabet Song - Chant (track 1) and listen to it. Try to sing alone with the song.
It will be very helpful to show your baby the cards with the notes names during the singing process as it shown on the following video:
Ask your baby to find a card by calling it's full name:
Door - Do, Rain - Re, Mirror - Mi etc (Flash cards Pages 1-2)
Put the cards on the table or on the floow and ask your baby to give you the 'Door' or the 'Mirror'. Thank him/her every time, when correct card is being picked. Your baby is working hard to develop his visual abilities to focus and recognize different pictures and remember their names on the top of that.
If your piano key stickers are on the way, use your digital piano key guides. We suggest you to print them out for your piano. .
Learn how to sing each key with the help of the stickers or guides.
You and your baby can press each key with your right hand index and 'walk among the keys'.
If he/she will ask you to do it by self, don't forget to reward your baby with music coin!
Developing you baby's fingers' awareness.
Your child is just in process of learning how to control his fingers. We recommend you to work on the following exercises every day.
In general your child can count his/her fingers, give each finger a name. However, most of the time children doing it slow at first, saying out loud the sequence.
For the most effective development of this skill we follow the best practice of fastening each finger to the names of music notes.
Learn the name of each finger of right hand in accordance with their order.
Print out the picture of hands and ask your baby to apply his/her right hand to the picture. Suggest to lift a finger at a time randomly by calling their names as 'Door', 'Rain', 'Mirror' etc.
Exercise for feeling the gravity of your baby's hand on piano:
- Find a middle Do.
- Press the key yourself using your thumb and ask your baby to take your wrist and pool your hand up.
- Challenge your baby and show the resistance.
- Ask your baby to do the same and press the DO key with his thumb.
- Try to pool up your baby's hand. Have fun playing this game untill your baby will learn to keep a piano key with some weight.
This exercise is important for developing the feeling of gravity. Practice the exercise daily.
Developing hands-to-eyes coordination (5 min)
'Guess Key': what is it and what to do with it.
Play the module for 30-60 seconds, after that stop the game with F1 key. Always write the amount of coins in the basket!
Ask your child to SING the notes names or sing with him/her.
You may cover part of the keyboard in order to keep your child's focus in one place