Author: Michelle Tuesday

Teaching music to children under the age of five comes with specific challenges. Preschool learners can’t read most of the words in typical piano lesson books. Their brains are in a unique stage of learning that requires a lot of repetition and appeals to all the senses.

But preschoolers are also like sponges. And children don’t stay in this unique stage of learning very long. Since music is proven to impact cognitive development in a lot of positive ways, it stands to reason that the earlier we start teaching music to children, either private music lessons or group music classes, the greater the impact of that learning will be, especially if music becomes a lifelong hobby or even a career for the learner.

Here are ten tips to help tackle the challenges that come with teaching music to preschoolers. Remember that every learner is different.

1. Keep it moving. Spend 5 minutes tops on an activity and move on to another activity. Check out this list of preschool music activities for ideas.
2. Use pre-reading methods and supplemental books from multiple publishers at the same time to slow down the pace. You can keep things moving by switching from book to book. Examples of pre-reading book series: Music for Little Mozarts, Faber’s My First Piano Adventures.
3. Review, review, review! Early pre-readers and some older learners with disabilities benefit from slower pacing. Try playing through the last 10 songs your student learned every week as a warm-up. This builds the student’s confidence before tackling the newest song.
4. Give small children performance opportunities like everyone else! A performance piece doesn’t have to be fancy; just polished! If the song is “Two Blackbirds” from the beginning of Faber primer, fine! If applicable/available, practice on the lesson room piano, then also practice on the recital piano, and practice bowing for the audience.
5. Incorporate general preschool music activities that reinforce concepts while reducing the amount of multitasking the piano books require (e.g., claves or even coffee can drums to practice rhythm; “food rhythm charts” are also a fun way to introduce or supplement rhythm concepts).
6. Use Kodaly rhythm syllables (ta, ti-ti).
7. Let the child steer a little. Children are very imaginative and love to learn. One way I do this while still maintaining authority over the lesson is to “reward” the child with their desired activity. Example: if the child sees the drum set in the corner of my lesson room and wants to play it, promise the child they can play the drums for one minute at the end of the lesson or after they achieve a goal.
8. Use visual and audio aids like YouTube videos and the audio tracks that come with all the Music for Little Mozarts books. Children love variety!
9. Introduce some elements of routine into your lesson. The 10-song review at the start of the lesson is one example of this, but another idea is to start every lesson with a “hello” song and end every lesson with a “goodbye” song. Very young learners gain from a lot of repetition mixed with gradual introduction of new concepts, and familiarity also fosters confidence.
10. Have fun! If you have fun, they’ll have fun.

What do you think of these tips? Do you have more teaching tips to share, or preschool music activities to add to the list? Post them in the comments section or on our social media pages. We’d love to hear from you!

Teaching music to preschoolers is incredibly rewarding. It can also be challenging. Preschoolers are enthusiastic, energetic learners, which makes them fun to teach, but it also means a lot of squirrely behavior in the classroom.

One strategy to keep your preschool-aged kiddos engaged in your music lesson is to include a lot of variety. With that in mind, we’ve started a list of short, easy preschool music activities you can incorporate.

• Start with a “Hello” song. End with a “Goodbye” song.
• Listen to music and create art that matches the music. Example: listen to Blue Danube and color a river.
• “Emotions” game: listen to a song and ask the children if that song makes them feel happy, sad, or scared. Each child gets to draw an emoji or attach an emoji sticker demonstrating that feeling onto a card. While listening to the song, the children may color and decorate their emotions card.
• Play coffee can drums to practice Kodaly rhythms (ta ta, ti-ti-ti-ti).
• To the tune of “Mulberry Bush”, sing and act out with claves: “This is the way we tap our sticks…”. Add variations like “hammer our sticks” or “scrape our sticks”, and let the children make up their own variations (“row the boat”, “sweep the floor”, etc.)
• Act out songs with guided movement, like “Ten in the Bed” or “If You’re Happy and You Know It”.
• Have each child choose a food to speak in rhythm like “Pepperoni Pizza” or “Strawberry Pop-Tart” and play it on different instruments.
• Use the Music for Little Mozarts book and accompaniment series to play “Racing Car” on the piano, which features glissandos (representing the race) and tap-tap-tap on three black keys (representing a honking car going “beep beep beep”).
• Play an energetic song and allow the children to dance with colorful scarves. Add the “Freeze Game” by pausing the song every so often, which is the cue for the kiddos to freeze in place until the music starts back up again.
• Music solos: each child gets to take a turn “performing” (improvising) on an instrument. Time the performance, allowing 30-60 seconds to jam. When time is up, the performer bows to the audience (the rest of the class), while the audience applauds.

Do you have music activities you’ve used successfully with preschoolers? How about activities that didn’t work? We’d love to hear some of the ideas you would add to the list.

Happy teaching!