4 Tips for Keeping Little Ones Engaged During Lessons

Teaching preschoolers can be an incredibly rewarding and fun way to fill up your daytime hours, but preschoolers come with their own set of unique challenges for piano teachers. Even the most experienced piano teachers can struggle with how to keep little ones engaged for a full 30-minute lesson.

Preschool-aged students require a different mindset and an entirely different approach from average-aged beginners (although some of these tips would be useful for teaching all ages of children).

Here are a few ideas for keeping little people engaged and learning in their piano lessons:

1. Enter into their world.

Preschoolers have rich imaginations! They are constantly making up stories and building worlds around themselves, and they want to bring you in. Listen to their stories and talk to their stuffed animals! While you may feel the compulsion to stay “on task,” engaging with students where they are can have a powerful impact on your relationship, and subsequently, your effectiveness as their teacher. This may feel like a waste of time at the beginning, but I have found that the more I engage with my students’ stories, the more willing they are to engage with mine.

2. Engage their imaginations.

Young children learn through play and through stories.

Music for Little Mozarts was created to engage a child’s imagination. The relatable characters and storybook format draw them into an imaginary world where learning can take place. Students will follow the adventures of Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear as they explore the piano with their friends, aided by a Magical Music Book!

3. Keep everything short.

I probably don’t need to tell you that preschoolers have short attention spans. They also do better with short instructions (no long explanations), short activities, and small pieces of information.

Music for Little Mozarts was designed with this in mind. Each page of the Lesson Book introduces only one or two new ideas. Students get to explore playing the piano with very short little pieces (only 2-4 bars in Book 1!). The Workbook and Discovery Book provide short activities and games to reinforce the concepts learned in the Lesson Book.

I would recommend having at least 10 activities planned for a 30-minute lesson, however…

4. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

It is perfectly acceptable to repeat the same activities over again, even within the same lesson. Kids love repetition! I’m sure you’ve experienced a child with a favorite movie or song who insists on watching or hearing it again, and again, and again. Use this to your advantage in lessons!

Keep a close eye on your student’s level of interest with each activity, and be aware, there are some activities that kids will not want to repeat. However, if you see that they’re really engaged in something, use it as an opportunity to continue to review the concept.

So what does this look like?

1. Start by reviewing last week’s concepts/songs. Read the stories in the lesson book that you covered last week, or if they want, start at the beginning of the book, and read all the way up to where you left off! Playing the music as the student wants to and time allows.
2. Learn something new! Go onto the next page or two in the Lesson Book.
3. Get up and move! Try a correlating activity from the Discovery Book.
4. Color or draw: Have them do one of the corresponding Workbook pages.
5. Return to the piano: have them try any new music again.
6. Play a game to review a concept they’ve learned in a previous lesson.
7. Do another Workbook page or Discovery Book activity.
8. Repeat an activity either from this lesson or a previous one that the student really liked.
9. Return to the piano and review their music again, maybe re-reading the story, if they’re interested.
10. Do one more activity that drives home the concept(s) that you covered today.

You may not get to everything, but it’s best to be overprepared. There are few things worse than finding yourself 20 minutes into a lesson with a 4-year-old and you’ve run out of things to do!

Looking for more tips on keeping kids engaged with Music for Little Mozarts? Check out the Teacher’s Handbooks !