Music for Little Learners Hands-On Resources

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[Today’s article “Music for Little Learners Hands-On Resources” was written by Gena Mayo and is part of the 31 Days of Music in Our Homeschool Series.]

A couple of years ago I received the Music for Little Learners Kit #1 and had the opportunity to review it with my kids.

Are you a piano or elementary music teacher? Or maybe you’d like to teach music to your own kids or at a homeschool co-op? I think you’ll really enjoy the Music for Little Learners Kit #1 (and all the other resources they have in the New Song Music Studios Shop.

Read on to learn more about

Music for Little Learners Hands-On Resources:

My 5-year-old daughter had been wanting to start playing the piano for quite a while now. This kit was so fun to use with her during the summer to get her prepared for private lessons.

Here is what is included in Kit #1:

A Lesson Booklet, containing 35 lessons plus 6 added games that cover the fundamentals of how to read music and play the piano
A pair of white gloves (with velcro on the fingers)
Velcro letters and numbers, 2 each of A-B-C-D-E-F-G and 1-2-3-4-5 (to put on the gloves)
A Treble clef mat and Bass clef mat, a great way for students to learn how to read music by being able to manipulate the sets of tokens with the musical alphabet on them
32 pages of scale cards to teach the first six scales
Square green plastic tiles, 2 each of A-B-C-D-E-F-G
Square blue plastic tiles, 2 each of 1-2-3-4-5
Square red plastic tiles, one each of A#-C#-D#-F#-G#
Round red and yellow tokens, 3 each of A-B-C-D-E -F-G
2 “Lines of the Staff” cards
Foam pieces of a treble clef, bass clef, brace, 2 “4”s (for time signature), whole note, 2 half notes, 4 quarter notes, and a bar line that can be used for learning to read music and learning to even compose your own songs
3 song cards (“This Old Man,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,”)

It’s all included in this cute little suitcase:

Here are some of the fun lessons you’ll teach:

The kids will learn about the staff and basic music notation with the staff cards and foam pieces in the box.

Here is a lesson on numbering the lines and spaces. The kids practice with the staff cards and number tiles.

Then they can play different types of games to practice it (speed drills!).

Here they built the grand staff with the staff cards, but it also works well with the blue mats.

Caterpillar notes

My daughter really loved making the caterpillars, which helps them to recognize how the notes ascend up the staff in a scale, and that they repeat. See one way to do them at the top picture of this post. Below is another way we did it–to build 3 C Major scales. Included in the box were little googly eyes that you can glue to the head of the caterpillar.

Piano Playing

Then, of course, there is lots of actual piano playing. The cards and gloves really help the young kids be successful at playing songs and scales.

See how the gloves can be labeled? You can use the numbers for finger numbers or the notes, changing them around or removing them depending on what the particular song needs.

My daughter absolutely loved using the gloves. She would go grab them out of the box with the song cards and play all by herself! We still need lots of practice with the scales, but that will come.