On Saturday afternoon we went back over to the church building for Kolby’s piano recital. There were eight kids who played at the recital, including Kolby and four of the piano teacher’s children. I had to include these two videos from the recital. Kolby’s teacher gave him compliments before and after he played, saying that he was doing very well for his level [he has had 6 piano lessons so far] and that she didn’t know if it was his mom or his dad who was helping him learn so much, but he always did so well and came back for each lesson knowing more each week (we did tell her afterwards that we don’t do much more than try to make sure he practices most every day, and he is learning most everything on his own). She also held up his music book to show all the other kids after Kolby played his last song, and showed them how well Kolby had done to play such a long song. I have to admit, it’s pretty fun to hear a teacher compliment your child, especially when he has done so well with practicing and deserves the praise. So, anyways, Kolby played his songs well. Although he only had two songs listed on the program, he decided to add a couple more and ended up playing four songs. After each student played their songs the teacher handed them a little bag of treats. It was pretty cute when, after Kolby finished playing, Camden hopped up and said he wanted to play too. Kolby’s piano teacher is nice, and let Camden play for a few minutes, and when we told him it was time to be done, he quickly asked for a treat of his own. Pretty smart kid! After the recital was over, Eli also wanted to play for a few minutes. And later on that afternoon Kolby’s teacher had one of her boys bring over an extra treat bag for Camden and Eli to share – so thoughtful. So, it ended up being a very nice first recital, and I was very glad, too, that Michael got home from work early enough that afternoon to be there with us for the entire recital too.
Showing posts with label Practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Practice. Show all posts
15 December 2008
12 November 2008
Kolby Practicing the Piano
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.
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