Simpedia

Emily C., California

I have two five year old special needs boys. One, C ,was exposed to drugs in Utero and probably has developmental issues but has not been diagnosed yet. J, the other boy has Williams Syndrome. They are very different from one another. C is very bright and very active, he grasps what he is being taught and can do it, but REALLY wants to control the situation. He doesn’t have a lot in the way of verbal skills yet but is a charming – most of the time. J gets frustrated easily and will audibly grind his teeth, make grunting noises or hit himself if he feels overwhelmed. I took these two because their families are very involved and have read the research that convinced them that this training will be beneficial down the road. Neither boy can sit at the piano for anywhere near 10 minutes.

I try to do activities with them that “point toward” our final destination of being able to play level one songs. One thing I absolutely have to do is limit the amount of stimulation they get, they are very easily distracted – in C’s case I believe he fakes it sometimes in an attempt to claim territory. I’ve been working with both boys on breathing techniques and will have them do some of the vocal warm ups I use with my voice students if they get frustrated or distracted. This works especially well when J begins to become overwhelmed and I hope it will help C develop his vocal skills. He talks very little but will sing sometimes. I have them tense and relax muscle groups to begin to have a bit more control and awareness. This is especially good with J who will become very rigid along with the other behaviors when he becomes frustrated. Sometimes I have to get right up in their faces, nose to nose, to get them on task.

I try to rotate activities in 3-4 minute time periods. Here’s some of what we’ve done:

Echoing rhythms- I play one and they imitate, they play one back and I “see if I can get it right”. Sometimes I tap the rhythm out on their bodies to keep their attention. In one building where I teach the floor is very resonant, so I’ll have J lie on the floor and bang the rhythms out so that he can feel them in his body. Sometimes he echoes back with his hands and sometimes with his feet. We move the echo game to the piano.

I use the paper keyboard quite a bit. They point out notes and practice the patterns for “Dreams” and “NS”. This works really well with J. We get right down on the floor and put our heads together. It cuts out other distractions and without sound or texture he seems to be able to concentrate better.

I have them play notes on the piano with different fingers like: “hmmm, lets see. Can you play a C with finger 3?”

Practice pieces of “Dreams” and “NS” on the piano. They can both play the sentences after about 2 months but they can’t put hands together yet. I’ve been working on getting them to start playing the left hand of “Jackson” and Cross Pollinating it with “NS”.

We do chords, broken and block – very tough for these guys but they are getting better.

I play and have them sing.

At the very end of the lesson I give them a drum and I’ll play something up tempo that they play along with. Usually they like this a lot but sometimes J gets distracted and just looks at all the stuff in the room.

I’ve been getting more co-operation out of C but saying “OK, if you won’t do this activity then you can’t go and play the piano” or “If you won’t……..then I guess this lesson is over.” so far that’s working but I imagine a time will come when it doesn’t work so well. Both boys will play the piano for long periods of time if they are just “doodling”, sometimes as long as an hour according to the parents.

Right now I feel like what I’m doing is more music therapy than piano lessons, but I think we’ll get there eventually. I’m no expert at this and I’ll take any suggestions that the Simply Music community might have too!!

Sheri R., California

haven’t taught at a rec. center but I think people who take rec. classes realize that they are cheaper there and that if they want to continue in your studio it will be more. You could always advertise it as an intro class in the rec. brochure and then people might be more understanding that continuing on from there in your studio will cost more.

Mark M., New York

If you’d asked about age 6-11 I wouldn’t hesitate to answer. All my students age 6 through adult have, for the most part, done each Foundation song in a single week. How many lessons that takes, per se, is another issue, since that depends on how much you add in variations, composition, improvisation, arrangements.

Age 5 is much harder to say. My daughter is 5 and does better than most of my students of any age, but we’ve “done music” one way or other all her life, and she has me actively coaching her through practice. A private student who is only 6 mo younger than her has taken 6 mo to get up through only Honey Dew, with only Dreams Variation, Storm Variation, and Dreams Arrangement 1 added in beyond those 4 first Foundation pieces. So I couldn’t possibly generalize about 5, way too big a range of progress.

I was very excited about the workshop SHM and started thinking about how I’d do it, and though it could certainly be very focused and done in a shorter amount of time, I thought that a really nice 8-week program could be created around it as follows:

Week 1 – Setup Conversation (practice routine and other basic intro stuff) and The Basics

Week 2 – Night Storm (Pop)

Week 3 – Jackson Blues (Blues)

Week 4 – Improv on Storm LH (C&I)

Week 5 – Amazing Grace (Accompaniment)

Week 6 – Variations — consider Storm, Jackson, maybe Amazing Grace (Variations & Arrangements)

Week 7 – Ode to Joy

Week 8 – Recital and Wrapup

With everything I’ve added here beyond the 4 workshops songs themselves, hopefully the potential benefits are obvious, in terms of added experience of the breadth of the program (C&I and memory pieces), opportunity for better success (The Basics) and also opportunity at the end for both celebration and “upselling” to full lessons. So maybe you’d keep it at 8 weeks if you wanted to do these extra things as well.