Klarinet Archive - Posting 000594.txt from 2003/10

From: "Christy Erickson" <perickso@-----.net>
Subj: Re: Re: [kl] Starting a youngster
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 00:19:05 -0400

Stacy, I don't mean for people to think I don't believe in teaching music
to children at an early age. I certainly do but it takes an entirely
different approach and I really think it needs to be done in very general
terms. My daughter started at age 4 with Kindermusik and had a blast in
that program. The rhythm, listening, movement, and music reading
fundatmentals are given in those types of classes and the activities are
much more appealing to a child of that age. I fear that if a child starts
too early, especially with a teacher who has no training or experience with
young children or one who uses the same approach used for their older
students, they can easily be "turned off" to the idea of continuing. I've
seen it happen many times. Once a child views learning to playing an
instrument in a negative way, it's very difficult to turn that attitude
around after they've had a bad experience with a pushy teacher or parent
with unrealistic expectations for a child.
I just had a first grade piano student (age 6) who started with a
teacher who was teaching him songs by rote but he had no clue why he was
doing what he was doing-didn't even know the letter names of the notes on
the keyboard. We have been working together now for several months and
we're still working on finger numbers and letter names of the notes. This
poor kid initially had a very negative reaction to my approach, since we had
to start all over again in a different method book. I managed to smooth
things over with him by saying, "you're a big boy now and you can now play
on the black keys." This was after he told me that what we were doing was
preschool work but he truly did not understand what he was doing at all. He
threw a gigantic tantrum when I refused to put letter stickers on the keys
of my piano like his previous teacher had. Christy

> Wow I didn't realize that many felt so strongly about the age of a
> beginning clarinetist... I will teach anyone who is interested,
> regardless of age. I wish I had started at 7, or even had the OPTION
> and resources to start at that age. I wonder where Julian Bliss
> would be today if people thought 4 was too young... *shrug* To each
> his own I guess...
>
>
> Stacy-Michelle

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