How to teach music to my son while I am not good at it at all??

[Michael2009]

I need your ideas and help badly for this subject.  I am not good at music at all: can't play any musical instrument; do not know much about famous composers and their works.  However, I hope my son can do better in this field by being stimulated early.  What I do now is just playing Mozart classic music and some world famous opera music daily for him.  I wonder if and HOW I should do more to improve his music sense. 

In addition, I just read the book, "what's going on in there? How the brain and mind develop in the first five years of life" by Lise Eliot. In Chaptor 17, the author cited studies on Mozart music effect on both adults' brain and kids' brain.  The conclusion is "musical experience improves spatial-temporal reasoning at any age"(p451); however, to improve kids' sptial-temporal reasoning ability, being exposed to the music is not enough. It has to be combined with keyboard training.

For piano lessons, my son is still to young.  In my mind, most classes are for kids older than 3.  Is there other way to help kids with keyboard training.

Any input is welcome!!

[aangeles]

For my daughter, we are planning to start her on Suzuki violin or piano when she turns 3-3.5 years old. In the meantime, while she is still too young for formal lessons, these are the things I started to do when she was 14-15 months old to teach her music. As a disclaimer though, I am not a music teacher nor do I play any musical instrument at present so what we are doing is just based on lots of reading and research and adapting Doman methods to music.

1. Perfect Pitch - I played 3 notes on the glockenspiel (I now use an electric keyboard) and named them 3x a day and after 3 days, I retired one note and added one new one (Doman style). After I finished with all the notes for perfect pitch, I proceeded with note reading using flashcards and LR.

2. Classical Music - I played 1 classical piece 2x a day for 3-4 days. I printed out some portraits of classical composers and I showed this to Ella and told her the name of the composer and the piece before and after playing. I got my classical music pieces from the Beethoven's Wig CDs, Themes to Remember, and The Top 100 Masterpieces Of Classical Music. The classical composers cards I made on my own - just searched online for portraits of composers and printed them out on photo paper, printed out another sheet with 10 POIs (which I collected mostly from the Fandex Field Guide to Composers (http://www.amazon.com/Composers-Fandex-Family-Field-Guides/dp/0761112065/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277978205&sr=8-1-catcorr) and laminated them together. If you are interested, I think I still have some videos on the forum which shows the classical composers cards and how I used them with Ella.

Occasionally, I let her watch the Trebellina or Zin Zin Zin a Violin video. I don't follow a book or anything but just read on what other parents are doing and just improvised / adapted to suit my baby. There are a ton of other programs, of course, like "Music for Little Mozarts" or "Soft Way to Mozart" which I had also looked into, but decided that my daughter is still too young for these.

[aangeles]

Oh, I forgot to tell you that I also play lots of music in the background when she's playing at home or when we're driving in the car. This includes not only classical Western music but also traditional Chinese orchestra music, Tang dynasty poems set to music, and traditional chinese children's songs. When I was growing up, I loved reading and re-reading the Tang and Song Dynasty poems and so I am hoping that my daughter will grow up with the same love and appreciation for Chinese literature and culture. I thought the best way to introduce them to her at this stage is through music. She particularly likes these Chinese collections and can sing several poems and songs from memory already! 

http://www.childbook.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=i+love+reading+tang&Search.x=0&Search.y=0
http://www.childbook.com/Set-of-4-Books-and-CD-160-Songs-Traditional-p/cda2b4.htm

[Michael2009]

Hi aangeles,
Thank you for your response!! 

I did watched the videoes of how you used composer portraits with ella.  It is a great idea!!  I will definitely give it a try.

I love Tang and song poems too!!  I also hope Michael will be able to appreciate the beauty of these poems and Chinese culture in future. It is new to me though about "to introduce them at this stage is through music."  I assume the background music for these poems is Chinese traditional music, right?

Your Ella is so advanced in language learning. I am impressed with your investment on her early education materials.  You have purchased almost everything on the market for her.  As for me, I am kind of frugal   Unless I am sure it will be really good for Michael or I can't borrow from the local library, I won't take out my credit card.  For now, most time, I created teaching materials for Michael by myself according to his interests. However, after watching your videoes, I am planning to buy a few products on the market for him so that his learning process could be speeded up. 

Again, really appreciate your info.  It is my pleasure to know you!!

[aangeles]

Hi Michael2009,

You're right!    I was organizing Ella's learning area last weekend and she DOES have tons of books, music CDs, learning DVDs, activity books, etc. but mostly, it's books, books, books!!! It doesn't help that we are exposing her to 5 different languages so that is 5x the learning materials!  Most of it, though, are second-hand from discount bookstores or things I got from swapping with forum members here. Those are some of the options you can explore if you would like to get your son a lot of stuff without having to spend a fortune. I must admit though that I am more willing to spend for Chinese learning materials. That is because I was born and raised in the Philippines before moving to the U.S. and most of my generation of Chinese in the Philippines no longer know how to speak and read Chinese which I think is a great pity! I don't want my daughter to end up the same way so that's why I really make it a priority to teach her Mandarin. 

[Michael2009]

Hi aangels,
Thank you for sharing with me the ways how you collect learning materials for your daughter.  Yes, I should try discount bookstore. I never thought about that before!!

 I forgot to mention that I also borrowed a lot of my teaching materials from the local libraries, such as many children books, Little PIM dvds, Baby Signing time, etc.  It is a great source for free teaching materials!!

Oh, I want to ask you about your daughter's learning schedule for 5 languages.  How did you divide the time and how the schedule work?  Right now, I am starting to expose Michael to Spanish which I do not speak at all.  Can you let me know what children dvds you would recommend for him? Do you or your husband speak Spanish? Did you make Spanish flash card besides showing the language dvds?

I understand the language priority you set for your daughter.  It is important for our children to learn Chinese when they are young.  Otherwise, they won't be able to master the language or experience the beauty of the culture after they grow up.  It would be a shame for both the parents and the kids.

keep up your great job with your lovely daughter!!

Michael's mom

 

[ChrisSalter]

My background is in linguistics and music, and what fascinated me was how children all over the world learn to speak whatever language is around them fluently through some kind of natural language acquisition process. I wondered how that could be used to learn music as well, so here are some suggestions. First things first, kids learn by doing, not abstractly studying music theory or notation. "Music first, then studies" said Franz Liszt.

A) Dance with them. Movement in rhythm embeds the rhythm in their bodies. Be crazy and fun, and let them mimic you, in fact make a game of it where you do something crazy to the rhythm and then they follow and then switch. This is "call and response" or modeling. Brazilians use the samba, and while they start drumming early, they dance first.

B) Sing with them, if you are off key, sing along with music you like and then things they like. Play guessing games with classical music (Dum dum dum daaah! Who was that? "Beethoven!") Look for call and response type songs where the lead singer sings something and the chorus mimics or "answers" them. Look for that in Motown music, soul, etc, but it is in classical as well, like in Spring by Vivaldi.

C) Play drums with them. You might find drum circles around your town, or just put on some funky music and beat on some tables or clang a fork on a glass, but don't be afraid to have "loud time" and "free time". Then go into more follow the leader stuff (boom BOOM . . . boom BOOM) You can do this with words too (Boom shaka laka BOOM shaka laka BOOM shaka laka BOOM) alternating in a call and response. They learn by mimicking you. They also learn it is OK to be wrong and silly from you. Relax and have fun. It helps to have loud music in the background and join in rather than create it from scratch.

D) As they get comfortable with simple rhythms, go to a piano and choose just a couple of keys to improvise rhythmically on. The piano is a percussion instrument and by starting with 2, then 3 notes, you can have a lot of fun and get funky.

E) We learn our first language passively at first. A one year old can understand dozens of words, but speak only a few. Saturate your children with all kinds of music and make them guess who is who, from Pop, to classical to folk, and make it a game. They will surprise you. Learn a few motifs or signature hooks from some pieces or songs and sing them and develop a little repertoire of great pieces you admire and sing just fragments and make them guess, then have them sing songs to you and guess too. Move to identifying different instruments in songs or pieces, so they recognize piano, harp, horn, sax, Taiko drum, whatever you can pick out.

F) Make the adventure of learning about music something you share with them. You don't need to be the expert, just the courageous guide, saying, "Let's live dangerously, and listen to this!" When they bring their songs (they  may be soundtracks to video games) break them down like you would Mozart. Language is built brick by brick with vocabulary, music is the same, give them lots of interesting musical bricks to play with, and soon they will be wanting to build their own structures and be fascinated with how others did things.

I hope these ideas help.

Thanks

Chris Salter
Music Wizard Group

[ChrisSalter]

We have had some spirited discussion in this forum, with lots of curiosity and different points of view. We don't shrink from that, we hope to learn from it and take the best ideas and bring those tools to our homes to help our children grow.

With that in mind, we shared the free report on "Is Music a Birthright?"(http://www.brillkids.com/ext/partners/ebook-free-download-2.php) that gives some perspective the challenges of learning music, and their roots, some of which was brought out in our discussions. SoftMozart has some similar, more in depth articles on the origins and challenges of traditional music notation as well, the summary of which you can see in this thread (http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/information-about-music-history-and-theory-every-parent-should-know/new/#new). What I also added, in a different section, to try and give some perspective of the range of approaches and choices, is a series of posts about the four common approaches to learning piano (up to now). I believe that our methods, both Hellene of SoftMozart and Piano Wizard Academy, begin to shape a "fifth way". What is important to appreciate is they were both developed in response to something that was not really working, in the context of the limitations of the other approaches, trying to compensate for those gaps and yet leverage their strengths. Though each method has its advocates and champions, including Hellene and I for our own, and those advocates can be as we have seen quite passionate and compelling, NONE OF THESE APPROACHES IS PERFECT. We do strive to honestly "perfect" our process every day, with more and more knowledge, and this forum has been I think very fruitful in its exploration of the options. Here is my latest contribution to that conversation.

Below is the link to that section of the forum.

http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/four-common-approaches-to-learning-piano-some-pros-and-cons/msg60967/#msg60967

I don't know how many parents are following all this, but I can tell you if you are, you are now MUCH more knowledgeable about both the challenges of music education, and the pallet of options available, and I hope it helps you all find your own unique solution to your children's needs, and leads to a less dogmatic, more practical, efficient and fun way to bring music into their lives.

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