15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful learning tool for the musical mom, August 5, 2008
This review is from: Music for Little Mozarts: Deluxe Starter Kit (Paperback)
I am a mom that sings, but not a pianist. The price of piano lessons prevent us from having our kids take lessons at young ages. I looked at one of the lessons from a local studio and they said they use this series, so I ordered it.
I know how to play a little, and this book/cd/notecards, etc... is absolutely perfect for us. My 4-year-old son is learning at an amazing speed and he loves it. The cd that comes with it helped with the excitement. The dry-erase board that you can learn the letters of the keyboard with is wonderful because you can erase and don't have to use papers over and over. Plus, the little magnets that come with it are a great tool in getting them to understand that they can compose their own little measure or two, then I can play it for them.
I'm a huge fan and will be using this for my 2-year-old when she's old enough too, and I'll be ordering the next levels soon.
And we're saving TONS of money. I figure that once they are old enough out of these books, and are still interested and beyond my capabilities of teaching, we'll pay the high price of lessons.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The kid likes it and so do I, May 11, 2010
This review is from: Music for Little Mozarts: Deluxe Starter Kit (Paperback)
A few months ago I splurged on the whole "Music for Little Mozarts" package. This comes with a music lesson book, a workbook (coloring, drawing, etc.), a CD, flashcards, another "music discovery" book with another CD (these are pretty worthless as far as I can tell), two stuffed animals ("Mozart Mouse" and "Beethoven Bear," who feature in all the materials), and a magnetic/dry-erase musical notation board with magnetic notes. I also got the teacher's guide, but I don't think this helps much, unless you're a music teacher perhaps.
By the way, we tried another music package--it wasn't very good. This, by contrast, is professional and well-thought-out in practically every way.
This is a very basic, from-absolute-ground-zero package. I appreciate the very gradual pace, which begins with low and high sounds, then talks about loud and soft, then the groups of two and three black keys. Then you start playing two black keys together, then three, then you start going up and down the black keys... Anyway, it's very gradual.
The CD recording of the main lesson book helps a lot. It basically contains the entire text and tunes from the lesson book, and is written in a sort of "story" form--my little boy (almost 4 now) bought it anyway. We've listened to the CD many times (all at the kid's request), so now the tunes (if you want to call them that--they are as basic as you can imagine) are totally ingrained. So he really got into it. He sleeps with Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear (you might not think the stuffed animals are necessary, but they really help).
As to lessons, well, I take this approach: if he says "no," then we absolutely don't do it, and probably not the next day either. If we take breaks of a week or even a couple weeks, that's absolutely OK. On the other hand, if he seems enthusiastic, we kick things up a notch, and we have lessons daily or even, rarely, a few times in a day. We received the package around March 15 and were at it nearly daily for a couple weeks. Then there were a couple weeks in which we did only 3-4 lessons total. Since then we've been practicing fairly regularly, not a lesson every day but 2-5 per week.
Results: we've gone through half of the first book and have ordered the second. He can actually play the little tunes in the book, and when he successfully pulls one off, and I say, "Yay!" then he claps and says "Yay!" very excitedly himself. He's very proud of himself. He's getting better at putting the fingers where they belong, and also he can play different notes with different fingers.
I've also been teaching him "Chopsticks" which is his favorite thing to play. Today he almost got it right. I just had to prompt him once.
He loves the flashcards. We've gone through them many times by now and he likes to do all 32, or whatever it is, in one shot. This takes time because many of the cards involve clapping rhythms written on the cards. He can't do this yet just by looking at the notes--he has to look at the back of the card to read the numbers written under the notes--but he's very good at the actual clapping part, which I guess is the important part for now. He does know a lot of the signs inside and out anyway, in no small part because of the powerpoint & LR flashcards we'd done before.
Anyway, so far we can recommend "Little Mozarts."
BTW, I had 8 years of piano lessons as a kid myself, and once upon a time, for a short time, earned a living teaching violin. So I have experience with this sort of thing--your experience may be different, and if you haven't got a clue about where to start or what to do, you might want to hire a teacher (or not!). We are currently playing on an electronic keyboard (which he loves to explore and make noise with).
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Five year old loves this, November 2, 2010
This review is from: Music for Little Mozarts: Deluxe Starter Kit (Paperback)
My five year old son LOVES the bear and mouse and is very excited. He was getting a bit overwhelmed with how quickly the kid's Alfred course was going and so he wanted a gentler and more fun program. We found the perfect one for him. He wants to do all the books and learn about all the musical animals. I also bought the Church, Christmas and Halloween music books which he is so excited about. He likes the coloring assignments, the flash cards, draws notes for Everyone on the staff whiteboard, begs to listen to the cd, etc. Just a great all around program. Recommended by my piano-loving son. p.s. my son is doing this with his music teacher.
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