Piano for Preschoolers [Paperback]

Angie Crellin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2007

Piano for Preschoolers is a fun and easy system that will have your child playing familiar tunes in minutes. Numerous studies indicate that early piano/keyboard instruction boosts intelligence. This award-winning method allows parents without any musical background to teach their preschoolers beginning piano at home. For a fraction of the cost of private or group piano lessons your child can receive all the benefits of early piano instruction. With Piano for Preschoolers you can teach your child beginning piano in your own home, schedule lessons when your child is most receptive, and have a ton of fun at the same time. Beginning Course includes: Music Book with 17 familiar tunes written in color-coded notes on a traditional music staff; 17 Track CD including voice-over "count aloud" for each song in the music book; Parent/Teacher Guide with step-by-step instructions for teaching each of the 19 lessons; Durable Coordinating Color Strip that sits behind the keys of your piano or keyboard to guide your child to the correct key for each note in the music book; and a second Color Strip to fit securely on most quality electronic keyboards with mini-keys.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Best Product Award Winner 2007 --Dr. Toy

"Fun, new system that allows parents without any musical background to teach their preschoolers to play the piano - and it actually works. It's an amazing technique that creates fun right into the learning process" --Jodie Lynn, CEO/Founder of the Adding Wisdom Award, syndicated parenting columnist and radio talk show host

"Piano for Preschoolers is an exciting, affordable teaching method that includes all of the concepts necessary for preschoolers to master beginning piano. Each lesson introduces a specific concept that is applied with a corresponding song. The system includes a Parent/Teach Guide with step-by-step instructions for each song in the songbook. The well-written Guide walks parents/teachers through each concept and provides everything necessary to effortlessly teach each piano/keyboard lesson." --The LINK, a division of Modern Media

About the Author

Angie Crellin has studied classical piano for more than 30 years. She knows firsthand the joy that comes from playing the piano. When she thought the time was right for her oldest daughter to start playing the piano, she began her search for the right preschool piano program. Angie visited her local music store and purchased several of the most popular beginning piano books. Her daughter was so excited about learning to play piano that they got started right away. But the excitement didn't last long. Her daughter quickly lost interest in the first book, and then another, and another. She decided to give it some time. She tried again several months later, but her daughter didn't want to go near the piano. The girl she had video taped joyfully playing her own "compositions" since she was two had lost all interest in learning to play the piano. No matter how much Angie wanted to see her child playing piano, she decided then that she couldn't force her interests on her and that the piano just wasn't her thing. Now she knows she just didn't have a piano teaching method that gave her daughter an instant sense of accomplishment and the motivation to continue. A few years later, her preschool son started showing an interest in playing the piano. Angie certainly didn't want a repeat of what happened with her daughter, but she didn't know where to turn. She considered several group classes and private piano teachers in the area, but they were all using those dreaded beginner piano books she had purchased for her daughter. After hundreds of hours of research, Angie developed Piano for Preschoolers. The results have been amazing. Parents without any musical background are teaching their children beginning piano at home and both parent and child are having a ton of fun at the same time.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Piano for Preschoolers; 2nd edition (August 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1604611545
• ISBN-13: 978-1604611540
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 8.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,344,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your child will LOVE this!, December 11, 2007

By 

Song Mama "Happy to Be Home" (San Jose, Ca. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Piano for Preschoolers (Paperback)

I purchased this program for my 4 year old daughter after researching several programs/books that claim to be the best for introducing piano to young ones. I also checked with a friend of mine who majored in music and teaches piano; and she said this was a good system to start with because it teaches sight reading from the very begining versus trying to undue bad habits later. The child plays the notes by looking at the colors on the grand staff, and then playing those colors on the piano/keyboard. My daughter learned which notes were higher on the keyboard versus lower in just 2 lessons. She plays the songs in the book everyday and doesn't even know that she's learning to recognize notes. Also, the author is great at answering emails. I had a question regarding what to do next with my daughter since I started with her system, and she answered me with a very detailed and thoughtful email. I highly recommend this program if you would like to introduce your preschooler to the piano in a fun and rewarding way. My 2 1/2 year old, who is getting really good with colors, can also play Twinkle Little Star with my help(eye hand coordination is a work in progress, but this a great way to work on that!). With free shipping and money back guarantee, you can't go wrong. Try it!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A very poor introduction, September 12, 2009

By 

Lawrence M. Sanger (Ohio) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Piano for Preschoolers (Paperback)

After reading the more positive reviews here, I decided to plunk down the forty bucks on this package.

I have taught music (on the fiddle) some in the past, and I've even prepared some musical tutorial material before. I was also a moderately accomplished pianist "back in the day" (you'll never see me play piano on YouTube). In my opinion, this is not worth forty bucks. It's not even worth ten bucks.

The only interesting innovation--and it actually isn't an innovation--is that the notes are colored and you get some colored keyboard strips that you put above the piano keys. So you can say, "Play green" and your child will know what you mean.

You get 17 tunes in the book--that's not very many. They are not arranged according to difficulty; it starts out with "Twinkle Twinkle" which is decidedly not the easiest tune to start with. The "Song Book" is very plain. Tunes are printed one tune every other page (every other page is blank).

The biggest failing of this package, however, is the complete lack of any useful guidance to the teacher in the "Parent/Teacher Guide." I can imagine that you might be able to get a small child interested in the piano by teaching him or her how to play 17 tunes. But the meat of the program will lie in the techniques to get the child to understand what's going on, to pay attention, to care about things like hand position--all the little problems that have to be solved in helping a child to learn an instrument. These things are covered in completely useless generalities and in an almost completely unsystematic way.

Let me put it this way. If you buy this package looking to get something simpler and gentler than "Teaching Little Fingers to Play" by John Thompson, you will be sorely disappointed.

My advice to the vendor (I say "vendor" because the author is not named in any of the materials) is to go back to the drawing board and release another, greatly improved version. At the very least, scan in some pages of the package and put them on Amazon to let people see what sort of thing they're getting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My 3 year old loves it!, August 30, 2008

By 

Alison Roberts "littlerabbits" (Orem, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Piano for Preschoolers (Paperback)

My 3 year old son quickly picked up on the colored notes method. He loves that the book contains simple songs that he already knows the words to. After just a few weeks, he now sits down by himself and plays. Sometimes I even hear him singing along as he plays.