Kids’ Guide to Playing the Piano and Keyboard

Book excerpt: Children learn best when they can learn through multi-sensory means. By using hearing, seeing and kinesthetic methods, Emily Arrow has created this easy and fun book, Kid's Guide to Playing Piano or Keyboard, for children to use as an introduction to learn how to play the piano. The book is a simple and much needed piano method for beginning musicians ages 6 and older. Her process, which follows the Orff Schulwerk method, is very approachable as she walks young musicians through 7 lessons learning musical notes and chords on a keyboard through a color dot method. She uses colorful stickers to represent the notes, flashcards to learn the rainbow chords and video/audio links for students to access for further help. The book also introduces young minds to important musical vocabulary, fun facts and the history of the piano and provides a practice chart. It even provides on-line audio access so young minds can hear what the piece should sound like. Students will learn to play songs such as The Colorful Musical Alphabet, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and more! If your child needs an easy and fun guide to learning the piano, this is the book for you.