Piano and Real Life

With the new school year coming up I thought I would start posting about what curriculum we will be using for the fall. I started my kids on piano lessons a few years ago. We quite liked that program, but the program didn't like us back. 

Apparently I was supposed to buy a specific brand of keyboard, and have certain specifications on my laptop. After MANY calls with tech support they told me the only way to fix the problem was to either buy a new keyboard or a new laptop. Although I totally like just throwing money down the drain:), I figured we needed to take a different route.

I took lessons for a few years, so I decided to teach the monkeys myself. I didn't know what books to use so I just went to the music store and asked what were the most popular books for kids. This is what they recommended, Piano Adventures.

You can purchase them pretty cheap on Amazon, just click on the picture for the link.

We have really liked it, and it is easy enough to for me to teach. I will probably have to break down and hire a real piano teacher one of these days, but for now they will just have to deal with me as their teacher for one more subject.

Here is a fun little video of my daughter and I playing some duets on the piano. I laughed so hard after watching this, I hope you enjoy how much "real life" is in this video from my baby and my five year old. I also got a kick out of how serious Bella and I were. She has always stuck her tongue out when she is really concentrating, I think it's so funny. 

Apparently I rock back and forth when I'm really concentrating; not so funny, more kind of creepy.

Everybody Needs...

I have decided that everybody needs older children! They are fabulous. Now you have to wait a little while, and get through some of the tougher toddler times, but man has it TOTALLY paid off.

My little 5 year old is in his second year of pre-school. He is my first to have been completely home schooled, so I was a little nervous being the one to teach him to read. We had learned his phonics and all the letters, but he wanted nothing to do with me when it came to reading. I didn't want to push him, so I just relaxed and figured he'd let me know when he was ready. Turns out he was ready, but just not for me. He let his older sister teach him how to read!! They would sit together on the couch and she would encourage him to sound words out and help him with sight words. He has really grasped it and is doing great with his reading.

Then last week he kept watching all the kids practice on the piano. He decided he was ready for that too. So his cute big sister came and started to teach him. They let me record them for a little bit, I just love how cute they are! ( I know I'm a bit biased, but seriously aren't they adorable :))

Piano Lessons

I have wanted my kids to take piano lessons for quite some time. There were two problems, first it was going to cost me $35+ a month per kid and I was going to have to drive my kids there and back. So I just kind of forgot about it, until my friend told me about Piano Marvel. It is an online program that teaches your kid piano. All you need is a computer and a keyboard and it's only going to cost $15 a month. It is a lot of fun and I have been surprised how well my kids have done with it. Sometimes I do need to help them to find keys or go over the counts of different notes, but most of it they can do on their own.
Here is my little girl practicing. To check it out go to www.pianomarvel.com