Luca believes that playing games in the piano lessons can help children to have fun in the lessons while still learning a lot.
During my teaching career, I had to deal with different kinds of students: students really interested in music, students with no interest at all (but still sent to me by their parents), students who already know something about music and some with no music knowledge at all. For a teacher, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by this and so it seems perfectly fine to uniform all of them with just one piano method. For me, the final result is more important, independent of what method you use: what does the student really learn? Students can react differently to a certain method: there’s the student who goes through all the songs and little pieces by its own, there’s the student who just does his/her assignment, or simply there’s the student who even doesn’t do his/her assignment. And what if the piano method doesn’t work?
Parents have another important consideration: whatever result the children have, there’s also the fear of them of the first piano to be bought. They have questions like: “what is if my child then stops play the piano?” or “which one should we buy for making a good investment?”.
In fact, if starting children have to play the piano from the very first lesson following a printed method, these questions come immediately into the mind of the parents. Maybe they’re a little bit hesitant in buying one at that moment. The problem that follows is that the teacher cannot teach in a proper way and, more importantly, the little student cannot see big improvements, just because he/she has no piano in his/her home. Skills require repetition in order to be internalized.
What then if the method doesn’t appeal the interest of the student and he or she loses interest? You know how is it going to finish!
If the method then doesn’t appeal the interest of the student, the fatal step is done: the child will lose interest and of course you can imagine the very end!
As a teacher, personally, I must confess, it happened in the past of my career and unfortunately, I lost a few students! My first step to being a good teacher is to be able to criticize my job in a constructive way: how can I provide solutions that appeal to both the student and the teacher? That’s why also Studio MusicalMente is born!
The second step is then to understand what appeals to the student and to apply this in the lessons. If the teacher proposes his teachings in this way, studying piano becomes something personal for the student, something that printed methods hardly do. Of course, I don’t want to demonize piano methods! in fact, if taken correctly, they can give a help to the teacher, but still, the approach has to be personalized – that’s the important factor!
To create “inventive ways for artistic independence” requires a great effort, time and energy wise. For Children, GAMES are the most appealing.
It’s important for children to teach music through games and make music a game. Every parent knows the attention children put into their games when they play. They’re so focused on having fun that they even don’t realize if they fall while playing. Falling can even be part of the fun, rather than an accident – you just can’t stop them! The same applies to learning music: if learning is a part of the fun process, music becomes an interesting thing, a thing impossible to resist!
Of course, doing games requires a space for them. More than a simple piano is required to provide a MusicalMente learning experience. That’s also why we don’t provide teaching at home! (it’s such a relief for you, parents, to not have all our instruments, sounds and games all around your house!) Feel free to come with your child to Studio MusicalMente and to see him/her play the piano game.
Just before I leave you with this post, I should also state that playing games is one of our “inventive ways” and, as everything, if you use only that, it doesn’t produce the maximum result. A parent has to have knowledge of what he/she chooses for his/her child, becoming his hero parent.
That’s why we can send you for free some more guidelines to become a HERO PARENT!
We believe that everyone can improve their musicality. We bring challenge to music lessons so that you always learn something new, no matter if you are beginner or advanced.
