You might have seen on our Instagram stories that since September 2021, Matilda and Jemima have been attending piano lessons with Music Monsters, South Birmingham. The sessions are absolutely fantastic. The girls are learning how to play the piano, including all the intrinsic piano details in such a way that they think they’re just playing games and having fun and are yet to realise that they are learning along the way.
Piano Monsters is aimed at children aged 4-7 years, providing the very best start to their music learning journey. That said, Matilda is 8 and a half and is thoroughly enjoying the sessions too, so don’t be put off joining if your children are just a little older too.
We love that the sessions are taught in small groups. Our session has 7 pupils in (and their grown ups) and this enables the children to get used to each other and feel confident to complete activities in front of one another. Piano Monsters is jam-packed with games, challenges, and hidden-learning. Matilda really enjoyed creating a treble clef using strawberry laces and Jemima’s favourite activity has been designing her own music piece using duplo with musical notes drawn on (crochet, crochet rest, minim, minim rest). It was a great visual representation for note values. 2 beats or 1 beat? But each session is brilliant and has such fun activities that the girls come out of the classes, full of joy, with a spring in their step.
For those who have a piano, keyboard or even an app on your tablet or phone, you can take home your Piano Monsters book (you get this when you join and the book lasts for 3 terms) to practice the activities and sheet music that you have gone through in the sessions. It is great for reinforcing what they have just learnt, by keep practicing. However, you do not need any of these at home as some weeks we don’t practice at home, but the girls have retained from one week to the next, exactly what they learnt in the previous session.
So, what kind of things do children (and their grown ups) learn during the sessions?
– Beating in time
– Understanding rhythm
– Reading music
– Playing with both hands independently
– Finger strengthening
– Musical terms and language
– About different composers, styles and instruments
– Singing and pitching
– Improvising
– Understanding and talking about music
– Keyboard skills
Last term we learnt all about Carnival of the Animals, a humorous musical suite of fourteen movements by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It is a perfect start to classical music for children as they listen out for the Hens and Roosters and learn to make pecking sounds on the keyboard, the kangaroos where they get to do some jumping chords and the cuckoo where they can make cuckoo sounds too.
It really is a cleverly thought out music class and the teacher Becca Dawkins is superb. Engaging, friendly, fun and inspiring. The girls absolutely love her and their passion for music and playing the piano is just going from strength to strength thanks to these sessions.
If you would like more details about Piano Monsters classes, via Music Monsters, please look at their website here: https://www.musicmonsters.co.uk/southbham/
Classes are held in Halesowen (Hasbury Methodist Church, B63), Bearwood (Warley Baptist Church, B68) and Harborne (St. Faith and St. Laurence’s Church, B32). It takes us just 18 minutes to drive to our class at Warley Baptist Church on a Saturday morning from Great Barr. So it is really accessible to get to from North Birmingham too.