Nowadays, there are more parents sending their children for music, art, sports classes at a younger age, but can the parents able to spend the time and go through the process with the child together? At this age, children need attention from their parents and grow together.
Every week, the student is only going to have class for an hour or maybe half an hour, the rest is for the children to practice themselves, if the student is too young, the student will not know what is right or wrong. Practicing with the children is the key to success!
Not only that, the communication between parents and teachers is very crucial and important, it helps both to understand the student more.
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So what should a child learn at a younger age?
I strongly recommend for them to join some programs like Music Appreciation classes before going to any individual instrument classes, which are something like identifying the high and low pitches, doing some clapping, etc.
This will definitely enhance their musicality in terms of phrasing, sense of rhythm and pitch.
Piano
Nowadays, it’s really common that everyone starts with piano as their first instrument, simply because it’s essential for most of the courses out there.
The piano has a wide range of keys for students to explore. Students can also play melody and harmony on the piano, where some solo instruments like trumpet, flute, etc can’t.
Students at a younger age, the fingers are still very weak, and we have to build their finger’s knuckle/muscle slowly. Developing a good hand shape takes time!
Violin
It’s quite hard for a younger age child to start with a violin as the violin requires tuning. And most of the first few months/year’s lessons require the teacher to help tune their instrument.
Violin is an instrument that uses a bow to play it or sometimes pluck (pizzicato). In order to sound nice on the violin, we have to spend a lot of time playing the open string patiently for the first few months to avoid any “clutter/shaky sound”. Everyone definitely will need to go through bthis process.
For younger children, sometimes it can be dangerous if they practice alone, as the strings might snap anytime if you didn’t pay extra attention, this will hurt your child.
Summary
If you are really planning to send your children to individual classes, please do communicate more often with the teachers and work together. I’m sure by doing this, your child will be definitely progressing well!
Or you can send them to programs like “Little Mozart“, “Junior Music Course from Yamaha (JMC)”, to build their interest and musicality. Then only transfer to individual classes as their focus/attention is much more stable.
These are my point of view, hope this helps! Thanks for reading!