TmT.

Thanks. I needed that!

I cannot speak about Piano Wizard as I only use Soft Mozart. We've been with Soft Mozart for over a year now, and recently I joined the Soft Mozart Parent/Teacher Organization, which is where all the scholarships come from. We keep track of credits so the end of the year recital is a very busy time for us. Actually, we are just busy all the time.....

I used the program for a year before I joined the Soft Mozart Team. Since joining with Soft Mozart and getting to know Hellene and her background I have come to a better understanding of how and why she made the program the way she did. Since she is not a native speaker, I think she hasn't communicated the genius of Soft Mozart in English as well as she does in Russian. I think that is why you find that the Moscow Conservatory endorses her work. Well the Madrid Conservatory does as well, so I guess that doesn't hold true completely.I think you also have to understand the difference between the music education system in the US vs. the music education system in Russia. Hellene went to music school for 7 years before she entered into music college, after that she studied four more years and then on to the music conservatory which was five more years of music study. She knows her stuff. She is a classically trained musician who graduated at the top of her class.  She taught at the university level in the Ukraine and trained teachers in Russia. She even caused a riots at the university as more students wanted in her classes than the university had space for. Very few people in this country have the music background that Hellene does. She loves the classical method of music education. She thinks it is the best method to produce students who can read music, and also take music dictation (which requires perfect pitch and tempo), play, and compose. What she hated about it was that in the beginning only the very best music students will survive. Meaning those students who will learn on any method. Her program is the result of 30 years of research, trial and error and the many many students who were her guinea pigs. 

What you find in Soft Mozart is not a gimmick to get kids to play the piano. It is a classical music instruction made simpler so that it is accessible for everyone not just the musically talented. That is what she was on a mission to do for the last 30 years. This isn't something dramatic or revolutionary in terms of content. What is revolutionary is how modern technology, with the right approach, can move a child much faster in the music journey than any teacher can possibly do. It removes, for a good teacher, the hard labor needed to teach a child to master the basics. And then once a child has mastered the basics, the program can be used by experienced pianists to perfect sight reading and ear training skills. Madrid State Conservatory uses this program with it's university level students. There are other secondary schools using the program as well. I will post a link to the video  Soft Mozart: EVERYONE CAN at the end of this and you can listen to what professionals have to say about this. I am not a professional, I am a parent who just wants to teach music to my child. Soft Mozart, provides me with the opportunity to have a teacher in my house all the time.

What was the problem with classical music education that needed improving? Classical music education has not changed in centuries. The grand staff with all the notes, lines and spaces is gibberish to beginning students. It is like sticking a novel in front of a child's eye and expecting them to read. They just can't. So. Soft Mozart flipped the grand staff so the child doesn't have to worry about how notes move up and down but their hands must move left to right. Then it color coded the the staffs. This judicious use of color is not so that a child will memorize the notes with color, but to help the child to focus the eye. As that is a significant problem for beginning students. the best of us can only hold 7 items in our mind at one time and most children can only hold 2-4. So, Soft Mozart removes all the things a child must remember to make music and slowly and consistently builds the attention span, trains the eyes, ears and hands in an intentional incremental approach. There are no levels to the games where everything is the same on that level, there are complex algorithms that calculate the computer's next move based on what the user of the game is doing. It is not a one size fits all program, it is very individual and interactive. As the child builds the skills necessary to continue, the Grand Staff changes also. There are six settings to the Grand Staff.

What you will find in Soft Mozart is a clean screen, clear lines and a simple presentation. Reading Bear, BK, and Doman have chosen the same approach and I think it works very well. A child's vision is not the same as an adults. The things that get presented visually must move a child in the direction of training the eyes to distinguish all the notes, lines and spaces, they should not be there for entertainment.

The forum: There is a lot of stuff in our forum. We expect to have a brand new one by the end of this year.  But I've always found that if I present my question - even if it's been asked a hundred times, I do not have to go digging for the information, much like BK, other forum members will come to my aid and direct me where to go. And a teacher will always respond with the help I need. When we were trying to get Cayla, our little girl with Down Syndrome, to play with all fingers and two hands, I did not find the help I needed at a non-profit that specializes in teaching Down Syndrome kids piano. I got my help in the forums by just asking and waiting for the answer.  There is no need to wade through the hundreds of posts hoping to get what you want. Just ask. someone will come to your aid.

Scholarship/Academy: These two are closely connected. Right now, a one year subscription to SM is essentially $300. You can get it with a 30% discount if you want to do some work, or just use Manda's referral coupon she posted above to get it for 20% off and no work involved. or you can buy a 30% coupon from BK with your loyalty points. If you participate in the academy, you can earn a perpetual copy free.
Tamsyn is right, this is a genuine scholarship. It is a lot of work for the PTO to keep track of credits and it is a lot of work for the students to graduate each level. But Hellene's intention was to design the academy so that our students would receive all the components of a world class classical music education. You do not need to participate in the Academy, but there is no reason not to. Very soon, you will find tests and quizes attached to each level. So we expect the rigor of the Academy to increase not to get less. I do not have access the anything like this where I live. The Academy means my children can have the kind of music education once available to only a select few. 

Here is the link to the entire video Soft Mozart:EVERYONE CAN. It will do a much better job explaining things than I can:
https://www.dropbox.com/home/SoftMozartHellene2/SoftMozartALLFinal/SoftMozartYouCANParts/Soft%20Mozart%20Evryone%20%20Can

If there is anything that I learned in the last 2 years with Early Learning is that you have no idea what is really going on in their heads. It may seem like they cannot read, but they can. It may seem like they are not paying attention, but they are. When Philip decided to play, he played. Now there isn't a struggle EVER! But that first year was like banging my head against a wall. I was very frustrated - but I should n't have been. I should have enjoyed the journey!  I think you just keep presenting the information. Giving the kids the opportunity and waiting with patience. There are some things you can do to help, but if the child doesn't want to they just won't and you really can't make a toddler "do anything".

Being at the beginning is a great place to be, You have the ability to look at what others are accomplishing. I can see Philip is actually doing as well as this little girl was - but Philip is starting a whole year sooner. So I am fairly confident that we can at least hit that milestone. When Philip started mastering words at 16-17 months very quickly, I posted on here about what to do next. And a couple people told me that at about 18 months that phonics awareness started to kick in for their kids. Sure enough, in the middle of the 18th months, it kicked in for Philip. He has only read a few books to me ever - we will often go weeks without getting anything from him. He just doesn't want to. But when he does read, he reads with fluency. According to Reading Eggs he is about the middle to end of 1st grade. You would never know it you ask him directly to read for you. He just won't. But I think by kindergarten, he will be doing just fine......for now I plan on enjoying this ride.

Hellene beat me to the punchline.

Here is Philip's video from the recital. He is finally able to play without getting up and running around. He focuses better and will practice for 20 minutes or more. We are working on using all fingers. But he likes to play with his thumb. I bribed him to play with his index finger for the recital. He thinks it is fun to play with his thumb. He is still feeding the spiders in Guess Key Module. He said the spider has to feed her babies...I finally realized that came from Charlotte's Web. So he gets one right and then one wrong so he can give it to the spider. He is not impressed by the fact that Mr. Oops needs to make a pie.

This contest is a great time to see what Soft Mozart can do. You will see kids that just started and kids that have been using it for a few years. Jothi is a good example of what can happen in a year. But there are a lot of others. It makes me feel better that many of the kids that are doing well using the program alone started out just like Philip even though they were much older. The kids have to be trained to pay attention. I am looking forward to what the next year will bring for all my kids. I will post an update of Cayla later. She is now 4, has Down Syndrome, and is playing with all her fingers!!!!!! She can play with each hand separately, but not together yet. I think by Christmas we will have both hands playing "Ode to Joy".

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/up8YdaRzrCE&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/up8YdaRzrCE&rel=1</a>






The following video was an inspiration to us. The little girl at the beginning was a lot like Philip. She won't use the right fingers, she is moving her head around and arguing with her mother. And then you see her 2.5 years later. I don't think a piano teacher...even Hellene can do that by herself. I think it is the program itself.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/2q2bmsHaH78&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/2q2bmsHaH78&rel=1</a>

Just thought I'd bump this in case you missed it the first time.

Nee,

If you participate in the free skype lessons and watch the training videos, yes it can. It is not ideal. It would be better to have both. But you certainly can use this alone. We do, but there aren't teachers that would take my son this young anyway.

 Hellene is in the process of developing a whole new academy, and she will be doing webinars in the new future. This will make the program more complete.  Since you are going to use the academy, I recommend getting a 1 year subscription and then applying for a scholarship. It will save you about a $1000.

Hey guys, just want to make you aware of the kids at the Landfill Harmonic. They are a group of kids that literally live on a dump in Paraguay. They receive the worlds trash and make a living reselling it. They have created an amazing recycled orchestra. I have been following them for about 6 months. They just started a kickstarter campaign and sent me an email asking me to share their work. I thought the best place to share it would be at Brillkids .

Please consider helping. Even $1 will make a difference. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/405192963/landfill-harmonic-inspiring-dreams-one-note-at-a-t

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/fXynrsrTKbI&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/fXynrsrTKbI&rel=1</a>

Linzy,

On the first video, the sound effects were precious! Just keep giving the opportunity and do as much other stuff as you can. Your older one is doing fantastic. We've only used the program in setting 1. It was nice to see him using the others.

The little girl in the video is not mine and her parents refuse to give her up - I've asked. Evidently they want to pay for her college..... She and her sister and in my daycare. Her older sister is the one with Down Syndrome.

This is Miss Cayla right after Christmas as we are learning to use all of our fingers to play. She had been using one finger and now she is playing with all of them on her RH. We are working on the left. Her fingers are sort of short. My son is the one instructing her with a stick. He is a bit like your youngest.... :

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/hL2pWrcgEs4&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/hL2pWrcgEs4&rel=1</a>

Linzy,

Yes thanks for this thread.

I have 3 doing piano regularly. One with Down Syndrome who is 4 1/2 and one 2 1/2 and one 21 months. I think girls are easier to teach than boys. That is my current experience. The oldest and youngest are girls, the middle is a boy. We've been at this for over a year - with  slow but steady progress with the oldest. She is now playing with one hand using all of her fingers. She has no trouble reading all the notes. Down Syndrome causes some issues with muscle tone, we have had to spend a bit of time trying to get her finger to do what we want them to. She will practice 20 - 40 minutes depending on how tired she is.

My son, the middle one, has had progress off and on. He played through HCB the first time at 18 months. Then nothing....not one single thing but banging for 6 months. Then I had a really good where I got some good footage of him or no one would have believed me. Then nothing for 6 more months. He's now practicing fairly regularly. Nearly everyday, but sometimes he will practice more than once. Usually not more than 10 minutes at a time, but some days he'll go 30. That is when he is asking to play guess key school. He likes to feed the spider and then tell me how Mr.Oops is getting pretty hungry.

Ana, the youngest, has all the note icons memorized and played through HCB the first time about a month ago.She will play and try very hard some days, but right now she is very interested in how sound works. She likes to go to the keyboard sing a note (she always calls it La) and then press a key until she finds the one she is singing and then she will look at the stickers and call out the note she just sang. Her father is a decent musician, was startled when she did this at home on their piano - minus the note announcement because they don't have stickers. She is developing perfect pitch on her own by trial and error.

After reading Hellene's book several times and doing other research I've some to a couple conclusions, which should be pretty obvious those those of us in this forum, but we lose sight of them. 1. I just need to keep putting in input and they will, at some point, let me know what they know. And they probably will not do it one second before they want to. 2. If I keep putting it in, they are learning even when it does't seem like they are even listening to me. 3.It is way easier to read than it is to write. It is easier to learn read music than to play piano. The kids have to make their fingers do an awful lot of stuff. So, patience is in order. It may be that it isn't that they want no music, they just don't want to work so hard playing music.

One of the things I learned from a mom on a Suzuki violin forum is that I am expecting too much too soon. Some kids are physically ready for the demands of playing at 2 and 3 - other kids are not. But, we still take lessons. You take lessons because you are preparing their minds and the ears for playing. extra years are worth a lot down the road. There are several Asian moms on the forum that make their children take out the violin listen to the CD while holding the violin, and then put the violin back the proper way. They do this for several months and attend lessons. That is all they get done. But it works. Maybe all you need to do now is teach respect for the instrument. You can have your child sit at the keyboard and not bang while they listen to gentle piano tunes in the song mode.  ( I don't necessarily mean you guys, but others who may see this.)  What to do when they won't practice, do LM, or anything: listen to the music alphabet CD. It is ear training. The kids who listen the Suzuki CD the most progress the fastest. The nice thing about the CD is that the notes aren't just played they are sung, so the children are training their voices as well. Because they are sung in solfege they are memorizing the scales. This isn't stuff they have to learn later, it becomes part of who they are. We have it on in the car and in the house as much as I can stand it. When we don't have that on, we have the  Suzuki one on.

The card work is very important also. While the song is playing, find and place the cards in order. Eventually move that to placing the right notes on the staff. You don't have to do all of the songs, but work on one or two a few times per week. And work through the entire CD. In the file sharing section of SM there is a ton of resources to do this with ideas to make it fun. We carry the solfege circle ( int he files sharing section) in the car and take it into the Dr. Office or any place where I think we might have to wait and we do the various Solfege scales from the CD and point to them on the circle.

I think it important to remember that Hellene's goal is to teach music literacy using the piano and software as the primary tools. They are quick and effective. So, even if you are not progressing in the playing department for various reasons, you can still do the rest.  My oldest son just painted an old board we had lying around white with electric tape staff lines so that the kids could start putting the note heads on the staff - I want them to be able to sing the songs they are learning in solfege and place the notes on the staff in the right spots. You can do the same thing with regular paper or card stock and laminate it. I think of this as teaching another language not necessarily playing piano. But we are learning the piano....

As far as LM goes, it is helpful, very helpful, but not necessary. Soft Mozart will do much of the same things but it is not as easy as pointing a clicking. As a busy mom, I like the point and click nature of everything BK does. When you are tired you are more likely to pull out a BK lesson than drag out a bunch of cards and a staff or hook your laptop up the the keyboard. But,there is something valuable about taking the cards, handling them and putting them in order. Or placing notes on the staff yourself. It is entirely a different way of learning. 

This is Ana at 19 months - my son is trying to be her teacher.....I was holding the camera with one hand and trying to restrain him with the other.


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/vvfBSJw7SHQ&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/vvfBSJw7SHQ&rel=1</a>


I have a couple new ones I need to get uploaded and will post those later.......

you can right click and extract also.....

let me check it and repost......it should be a zip file with lots of PDF's




EDIT: Try again. It should open up a window for you to save it to your computer. Then you need to unzip it. You will see all the files. Each section of the teacher's manual is a separate file. The link goes to my dropbox, so it is safe.

If you have more trouble with it, let me know and I'll try to fix it.

Blingmama,

Reading - teaching a 5 year old is frustrating. That is one of the benefits of doing it early. You get to keep your hair color. However, daddude started readingbear.org and that will save you lots of grief. You are not going to make her sound out words and I would start from the beginning. and when she knows the words quickly move on to the next presentation. Easy peasy, no tears. She won't need to guess. After a couple weeks to a month she'll be doing great. Unless there is a skill set missing and then we can talk about that later.

Math - there is a thread on teaching toddlers math http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-math/math-curriculum-for-toddlers/ It has a ton of information. I would also recommend getting the teachers editions of Jump Math, they are free and you can log into their site to get them, but I have all of 1st grade here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/60668524/Jump%20MathTeacher.zip     You do not need to get the program, but the books teach you how to teach math. If she is not "getting it" one way, it will give you 10 other ways to come at it. The program starts at the VERY beginning. I am using it with toddlers.

The other thing I've come across recently is Eclectic Education's Manual of Methods  http://archive.org/details/eclecticmanualof00stew. What I like about it is that it is really Jump Math 150 years ago. It will explain the problems with understanding a child has and how to overcome it. It goes with Ray's Arithmetic but that doesn't mean you have to use it with that. Then I would recommend playing lots of games.  Games that require counting and keeping score. Games where you can compare more and less. Games that you have to use more than one dice. 

Dealing with subtraction: get her to count backwards: Use  a 100 number chart and start and 10. Then 15. and what ever number you pick. Then when moving to things like 10 grapes - 5 grapes....she can just count backward 5. Subtraction is just counting backwards she will think it no big deal if she counts backwards A LOT. Also skip counting forward and backward now will help with division later. Solves many issues before they come up.

Manda,

How Saxon teaches word problems in the beginning is simple. Addition problems are called: some/some more.  So you have 5 apples and Billy gave you 2. Now how many do you have?

Subtraction problems are: some/some went away.

In the above example, you ask the child if it is a some/some more or a some/some went away. You ask the question before the child tries to solve the problem. Then let them figure it out.  It worked very well. The kids are asked the question in Saxon 1 over and over so it gets ingrained.

You can demonstrate with manipulates a couple times. This should solve your problem.

become an affiliate and you can use your own code to get 10% off.


EDIT: It doesn't appear to work, maybe I am wrong about that.

Sums up the problem right there. These are the ones teaching kids and churning out a new innumerate and illiterate generation. Maybe we should just teach everything on the computer and bypass this problem?

I don't know that it is a problem. I'm beginning to think it is on purpose. I have a little boy in daycare that, since Christmas, I only see one day a week. I take all the kids in daycare to violin lessons in the afternoon. So he gets about an hour of work time. We practice violin during this time as well, He is bright enough but lazy. Oh, that boy is lazy. I've had him since he was 2 1/2. I didn't learn about EL till he was over 3, but I'm a home schooling mom, so all the kids get it whether they like it or not. Because of the way his birthday falls, he is in pre-school now. Two weeks ago they had parent/teacher conferences. He's completed all the k-2 skills in math and reading. I am the only on who works with him.  It is not hard to do this. It's not. This is not an ambitious kid. He does not come from a family of educated people.

I think our kids are incompetent in all areas of life and someone wants it that way. It's not a problem for them. If it were we'd fix it.