Tips For Effective Preschool Teaching

You may love working with preschoolers or find this age group completely draining; they can be both fun and exhausting! Little learners are full of curiosity and wiggles however this crowd can often attend lessons during the daytime when many of your learners are busy with school. The financial benefits are nice for an in-home studio, but if you’re renting or leasing a space, or depend on teaching for full-time income, you absolutely must maximize your earnings! Teaching wiggly worms who can’t read or decode (knowing we read from top to bottom, left to right among other skills) can be intimidating even for experienced teachers so I’ll share some great tips I’ve used in my studio over the past decades and explain why these are ideas you’ll want to implement in your piano studio.

Musical Development:

Regardless of the challenges, we must remember that this is one of the most critical ages when it comes to development of musical appreciation! Every “preschool kid show” has catchy songs and characters that are very musical. Kids love music! You can help shape future musicians by choosing a piano program that includes not just books with engaging characters, but audio that really speaks to littles. Ideally, music is already being introduced at home/daycare/preschool by their primary musical influencers – the grownups in their lives. Finding a piano program that includes folk songs and commonly heard children’s songs will engage your learners. I select Music for Little Mozarts often for my preschool crowd. My students love the “fun” pieces at the end of the recital books. In private or small group lessons, I purchase a CD for each child so that parents can play these melodies for learners in their “down time.” ( Music for Little Mozarts albums are also available through Apple Music or for purchase in the iTunes Store ). Listening doesn’t need to be active and pushing the play button while the young learner is playing with toys, taking a bubble bath or in the car are all great ways to expose them to the fun music they’ll later engage with (or even play) in their piano lessons.

Rhythms Matter:

For beginner preschool lessons it’s important to not go into detail with music rhythms. Rhythms in music are just fractional math, which most elementary children are not introduced to until third grade. First let me explain how I use psychology to help the student remember the four basic note rhythms. For a quarter note I remind the student that quarter is one word and one beat and we simply clap our hands together once. Moving on, I describe half notes with the phrase “hold me” because they are “empty” inside and need more attention. I even have my young learners draw or help me draw a sad face in the empty space. As I say “hold me” I clap and slide up my arm to the “elbow armpit” as my own daughter called it when she was young, or in other words, stopping after sliding up my forearm. I hold up one finger at a time when I say each word (the phrase “hold me” is two words) in “hold me” and then the student can count how many beats that note has with the fingers I am still holding up. For dotted half notes a.k.a. three beat notes I draw the same sad face but now with tears, the note is now “crying” and needs even more attention! The final tear is of course, you guessed it, the dot after the half note. For this rhythm I say “hold me please” which is three words / three beats and I clap and slide to my “short sleeve t-shirt line.” Grown-ups innately understand this is three-fourths of the arm, but for the preschool set, you’ll be making it fun by pretending you have on a short-sleeved shirt even if you don’t, or making a big deal of rolling your long sleeve shirt “way” up! For the rhythm of a whole note, I clap and slide up my whole arm, again, holding up one finger per word which is four for “whole note hold it.” To see an example video of my music rhythm demonstrations, click here.

I always try to make music rhythm meaningful and never a “deal breaker.” What does this mean? If a student plays rhythms incorrectly in the first attempts, or even the first method level books, I gently correct and they’ll usually play the rhythms correct after modeling (demonstrating then allowing the learner to try) however if the pitches are played correctly, we always go on to the next piece regardless of rhythmic accuracy. Young children need that instant gratification and if extra rhythm work is truly needed and not just an occasional mistake, I can easily give the learner the wonderful Music For Little Mozarts Rhythm Speller to complete in addition to the Lesson and Recital Book . Rhythm work matters in our teaching no matter the age of the audience…even preschoolers; but if progress is being made in decoding and playing music, we can count it all as great progress in the realm of teaching young beginners.

Know Your Audience:

A general rule of thumb is to plan for about one minute worth of attention per year of the child’s age. For example, you should plan on three minutes of focused attention at maximum with a three-year-old. Of course, this varies greatly per learner and an engaging activity or a delightful story (like when Mozart Mouse is afraid he might sneeze when meeting Clara Schuman cat in Music For Little Mozarts Music Lesson Book 2 ) will extend the time frame. Knowing if the young learner (and many at this age do not yet) has any diagnosed special learning situations like autism or dyslexia will also be considered. This means that during your lesson it’s crucial to “read the room” or know when to work on things like rhythm, when to take those repeats and when it’s time to throw in the towel and move on!

Off the Bench Activities, Dealing with Questions, and Friendly Flexibility:

Preschoolers can ask endless questions; funny questions that will challenge your ability to keep a straight face! And they can understand far more than you may imagine is possible. Always be willing to throw your lesson plan out the window! Sometimes your learner will ask an excellent question; be flexible! When an activity is obviously failing (those scented dot markers turned out to be too tempting to actually taste) or when circumstances are different than you expected (class size is much larger, you have a learner who is not ready to be in a group but it’s out of your control now), be flexible! Off the bench activities with movement are crucial to keeping learners focused and the wiggles out. I love to use the Music For Little Mozarts Discovery Books in my group lessons to keep everyone moving!

When dealing with a child who asks lots of questions, be sure to affirm the question positively. I usually say, “great question!” or another positive phrase, and answer as briefly as possible. If it’s actually a question pertinent to your music making or lesson plan, I get everyone’s attention (if in a group setting include all the learners, or in a private lesson, the grown-up accompanying the learner) and move the lesson plan in that direction. In a private lesson I compliment good questions with older beginners and try to move quickly past question asking (as it can eat up so much lesson time and become a “cool” thing to do) with younger beginners and those in group lessons. You can always follow up with your learner later in a group class by saying “we are going to talk about exactly that next week/later today” and I love sharing these good questions with grown-ups so they understand the learner is really engaging with the topic.

Repeat!

Repetition reinforcers are magical. There are many reasons to repeat pieces or sections of pieces when learning music, but this learning mechanism will not only help reinforce what learners are often hearing and seeing, but also will help young beginners develop patience and attention span in a positive setting. The best part is that children at this age absolutely adore repetition. If I allow my private students to select a piece for a warm-up, often they’ll select the exact same piece of music every time, and their grown-ups report they will play these favorites on repeat for months. The Music for Little Mozarts curriculum really takes the guesswork out of planning and reinforcing all the new musical terms and ideas in my lessons.

These are just a few of my tips however every teacher who has worked with young learners has a few tricks up their sleeve. What are some of your favorites?