Lesson #5

Suggestions specific to this lesson:
Welcome everyone back from summer and be excited for the 2nd Year: Keyboard Time!

Outline the practice process for this year:
Here at the beginning, practice only needs to take as little as Outline the practice process for this year:We can play a red chord now! With the Right Hand (sometimes it'll be referred to as RH in your books), we use the THUMB (finger #1), MIDDLE FINGER (finger #3), and PINKY (finger #5). If you want to have a fun visual reminder, you can paint those fingernails red, or put red Sharpie on those nails.

I'm going to be honest, I totally forgot to give them the red stickers to put on at home (my college daughter is leaving tomorrow, and my brain is mush...). You can draw a circle with dry erase marker or crayon on the C, E and G on your piano (see the image below to see where to place them - let me know if you need any help). Those can be rubbed off once you get your stickers next week. They’ll be ready to play Old Paint next week!

Celebrate Connection

Here are some ideas to bring playfulness to practice time!

1. Sing Old Paint with a Western accent
2. Kit Kat Keyboard: with the stopwatch on Mom or Dad's phone, time yourself (and Mom or Dad) to see how fast you can play all the C's! Now all the F's!
3. Primary Chords: When you play the red chord this week, sing, "Red" each time your play it. Now try singing red in a different language: French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German...ng Old Paint with a western accent.

Kit Kat Keyboard: With the stopwatch on Mom or Dad's phone, time yourself (and Mom or Dad) to see how fast you can play ALL the C's! Now all the F's!

Primary Chords: When you play the red chord this week, sing, "Red" each time your play it. Now try singing red in a different language: French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German...

Kit Kat Keyboard
Now that we know the black keys ‘sol’ well we are ready to master the white keys! Notice that the grouping of the black keys influences the grouping of the white keys. It is important for them to look closely and frequently at the keyboard in the beginning to reinforce keyboard geography. When they are hunting for those C's and F's refrain from giving too many verbal cues- or talking too much. Just keep singing the key phrases "find a group of 2 down one is C" and "a group of 3 leads to F Yippee!" and saying, "look again" "does that look right?"

C Position Chant
We learned ‘C POSITION’ this week which means our right “Thumb’s on Middle C and a finger for each key!" When we are in ‘C Position’ each finger is assigned to play the note it is sitting on. We will sing this chant A LOT in class! This week we practiced floating our bubble hands over the keys and then letting them land on ‘C Position’. Continue this at home!