So, I had to record Kolby playing the new piano song that he learned this week, Merrily We Roll Along, just because Michael and I were so impressed that he could actually play a recognizable song with the right notes and correct timing and everything after only taking two lessons. I was only planning on recording that one song, but after I started recording, Kolby wanted to play the song three times (he is supposed to practice each of his songs three times a day), and then play the two songs that he learned before this one. After I finished recording him, he wanted to watch the video, and then he asked me if I would put it on the blog. Pretty cute! I think it's so fun that he enjoys practicing the piano, I'm really glad we started these lessons for him. He has his third lessons this afternoon, and he is excited to hopefully move on to learning the letters that go with each note (the first three songs he has learned in this piano book have numbers assigned to the child's different fingers, so they can learn which fingers go on which keys). Kolby has asked us several times to explain the letter notes to him that he sees on the next few songs in the book, but we keep trying to get him to just practice the songs his teacher assigned him for this week and let the teacher teach him the notes when she thinks he is ready. We'll see if that happens at his lesson today, or maybe next week. Now the hard thing will be to find a teacher that is as good, as inexpensive, and lives so conveniently close to us when we move to New York next year and Eli will be ready to start lessons too. (Eli has already asked me about piano lessons and has started his own little "piano practice" sessions some days when he pulls out the primary Children's Song Book and pretends to play the songs in it). And now Camden has even started to "play" the piano too -- the older two boys have enjoyed "playing" the piano for the last few months whenever we have family home evening, so they just play random notes and we sing the words of a church song -- and the last couple weeks Camden has insisted that he be able to play a song for family home evening too. It's fun to see the kids actually enjoying this -- I guess there really is something behind the idea of starting kids out young, because I remember not enjoying practicing my clarinet when I was in middle school and high school (and I never got very good at it because of my lack of practicing). Maybe if we start them all out when they are around age 5 and they think that practicing is still fun, then by the time they are older and might otherwise want to avoid practicing, maybe they will be good enough at playing the piano that they will actually enjoy it by that time. We'll see how it goes, but for now it is pretty fun to watch Kolby learning and liking it too.
