A lot of teachers and parents have the misconception that young kids can not read music and substitute other methods in order to get them playing the piano. Young kids can read music even as young as three or four.
Waiting To Introduce Reading Makes It Harder
Waiting to introduce reading widens the gap between reading level and playing level and often results in students resisting it. It also introduces a new habit that they haven’t been expected to do before. Kids like routine and won’t see the point in doing something in a completely different way than they did before especially if it feels harder. It IS easier to learn by rote and memorize but not having good reading skills limits the amount of music players can play to what they can hold in their memory. It also limits their ability to play new music right away and jog the memory of old pieces. Memorizing the system of reading allows access to an unlimited number of pieces. Building reading skills gradually from the beginning is much easier and more effective than waiting.
Young Kids Have Different Challenges To Reading
That being said, four year olds have challenges in learning to read music that older kids don’t usually have. Finding out WHY a student is struggling is the key to over coming obstacles. When the underlying cause of the difficulty is misdiagnosed, teachers and parents often conclude that young students can’t read music. These are two reasons that I hear frequently:
Misdiagnosing Challenges Sabotages Reading
Misconception #1: If they are not reading words yet, they won’t be able to read music.
One of the advantages in the beginning stages of reading music is that you only need to be able to recognize letters A-G. Most young kids can do this long before they are able to put words together or string words into sentences. As piano music gets more difficult, recognizing patterns will be necessary but in the very beginning it is mainly straight note-recognition.
Misconception #2: The music print is too small for their eyes to read.
Unless they have a vision impairment, the ability to clearly see small things shouldn’t be an issue by toddler age. The difficulty that often trips young ones up is actually not seeing lines and spaces as individual things or as different from one another. (We’ll cover this below.) Using jumbo staff paper to WRITE on is a good idea because they are still developing dexterity which can make drawing small or detailed things challenging. I don’t usually recommend starting before age four for other reasons such as focusing ability, dexterity and ability to understand concepts.
These are really misdiagnosis of the challenges small children have reading music.
Challenges Young Kids Face in Reading Music
These are the obstacles that I see small children struggle with and how I solve them.
Obstacle #1 – Tracking:
Small children have learned to track with their eyes but not in the specific way that it happens in reading text or music. Following unmoving words or notes across the page from left to right is different than the tracking that happens when eyes are following something that is moving or looking at a picture where the eyes can bounce between objects in any order.
Solution: When kids read learn to read text, sometimes they need to place a ruler or bookmark under each line of text until they can learn to follow the words across the page with their eyes without losing their place. In music, this is easily taken care of by having a teacher or parent use a pencil and pointing to the notes as they go by. This helps train their eyes to track. Eventually they won’t need it. It’s also important to work on keeping their hand in position (one finger per key) and their eyes on the music as they read. It’s easy for anyone to lose their place in the music if looking up and down between the keys and the music frequently.
Obstacle #2 – Understanding Symbols:
Adults use symbols all the time and it is easy to forget that this is new for kids. Kids that have just learned to write their alphabet in all lower case may not be able to see that a capital ‘A’ is the same as a lower case ‘a’ or a cursive ‘a’. Young kids still take things very literal. It takes time for them to start grouping things together when they are not identical. They also won’t see on their own that music on the staff is a picture of what you are playing on the piano. The relationships of the pitches go up and down on the staff yet high and low go left and right on the keyboard. Then add in that rhythm is going from left to right and it can be very confusing for them.
Solution: Kids still need guidance to see what characteristics things have in common that allow you to group them together as the same thing. It takes training to develop this skill. Below are ways to train them to differentiate between notes on the staff. It’s important to give them questions they can ask themselves to determine what they are looking at.
Young Kids Can Read Music If You Tackle These 3 Things:
1. Difference between a line and a space.
2. Location of the note on the staff.
3. Differences between kinds of notes.
1. Difference Between A Line and A Space:
Often kids seem to be reading notes and then you ask them to draw a specific note on the staff and they put on a note that is nowhere near the note you asked for. This is mostly because they are seeing the staff as a whole and not as made up of smaller things. They also may not fully grasp that where you put the note on the staff matters. They need to be trained to be able to see that the LOCATION of the lines or spaces makes them different. This is a tricky concept for them because all of the lines and spaces do look the same.
LINES:
Ask Student:
1. How many lines make up the staff?
2. Can you trace over the staff? (staff you’ve drawn)
3. Can you draw a staff of your own?
4. Which line is closest to the floor? This is the bottom. Trace over the bottom line.
5. Ask which line is closest to the ceiling. This is the top line. Trace the top line.
5. Find the middle line.
6. Find other lines by counting from bottom or top.
7. Draw a note on each line of the staff.
SPACES:
Ask Student:
1. Do you know what a space ? (Explain that a space is the empty area between two other things.)
2. Can you give an example of a space? (Give the example of the space from a missing tooth. Show them a space in music is the empty area between two lines.)
3. Color in an area of a space.
4. Find the top space.
5. Find the bottom space.
6. Find other spaces
7. Draw whole note on each space note of the staff.
LINE AND SPACE NOTES WITHOUT A STAFF:
Draw line and space notes WITHOUT a staff and quiz student between the two using the questions:
Question 1. Does a line go through the middle of the note? (line note)
Question 2. Is a line touching the top or bottom of the note? (space note)
If understanding middle, top and bottom of the note is difficult, compare it to their bodies. Where is the top on yourself? (on top of your head)
Where is the very bottom of yourself? (your feet)
Where is the middle of your body? (your belly button)
Have them draw space notes and line notes. Draw the whole note first, then make it into a line or space note. Have them trace yours first if they find it difficult.
LINES AND SPACE NOTES ON THE STAFF:
Draw line and space notes WITH a staff and quiz student between the two using the questions:
Question 1. Does a line go through the middle of the note? (line note)
Question 2. Is a line touching the top or bottom of the note? (space note)
Have student draw line or space notes on staff. Use some jumbo staff paper. The dexterity to draw notes a specific size and in the right location will be enough of a challenge right now without having to draw very small.
2. Location Of A Note On The Staff:
Start with Middle C, D & E. using whole notes. (Don’t overwhelm with too many choices.)
1. Draw a Middle C and ask them to draw one next to yours. You can draw the ledger line for them.
2. Draw a D and then ask them to draw one next to yours. Make sure they understand that the top of the note needs to touch the bottom line of the staff.
3. Draw E and then have them draw one next to yours. It’s a good idea to start halfway in the space above the bottom line to make sure that half of the note ends up on each side of the line. You can put a dot to help them know where to start the first time.
4. Ask which of the notes they drew are line notes. Then show them that E is on the bottom line of the staff where middle C is floating free like a planet.
5. Ask which note is a space note. (D)
6. Draw C, D or E and ask which one it is. Make sure they go through the steps of asking?
Step 1: Is it a line or a space?
Step 2: Which notes do you know that are a line? (or a space?)
If it’s a space, the answer should be D.
If it’s a line there is one more step:
Step 3: Is it floating free like a planet (middle C) or the bottom line of the staff (E)?
3. Difference Between Kinds Of Notes
- It can be confusing for young students to understand that what a note looks like doesn’t affect what letter to play, only how long to hold it. It can be helpful to drill on those concepts separately at first. Once they’re reliably naming the note letters , you can draw different kinds of notes on C, D & E to make sure they understand that the line or space tells you what note to play and that is not affected by what kind of note is used. Try holding the different note values (whole, half & quarter) on each note.
Then start working on seeing the different parts that make up the note and how they can be put together in different ways to make different notes. You can compare the parts to parts of a stick figure and flower. Go over notehead, stem and whether it’s colored in or not. Don’t worry about dots, flags or beams till later.
I usually won’t add rhythm the first week with young students. If they can play through the entire 8 measure song by the next week fairly easily, I start working on the difference between whole, half and quarter note.
1. Draw a whole note.
2. Have them draw a whole note.
3. Add a stem to the whole note, making it a half note.
4. Have them make their whole note into a half note.
5. Color in the notehead to make it a quarter note.
6. Have them color their notehead in.
7. Draw all three on the board. Ask about the differences between the notes.
8. Describe each note:
whole note – not colored in, doesn’t have a stem.
half note – not colored in, has a stem.
quarter note- colored in, has a stem.
9. Draw new notes and quiz between the asking the questions:
Does it have a stem?
Is it colored in?
Strategies For Making Sure
Young Kids Can Read Music:
- Give enough repetition of concepts while working with them where they can retain it.
- Come at concepts from different directions. This can help change things up and work better with their short attention spans while still working on the same thing. It also helps build links to the information that will help them recall it more easily. Example: read notes in a song, notes on flash cards, draw notes etc.
- Revisit information often in order to store information in long term memory. Daily is ideal.
- Short practice sessions regularly yields better results than long sessions infrequently. When you wait too long between practices, the information has to be relearned every time because it is only being stored temporarily in working memory.
- Stop when you notice fatigue. If you notice they do really well in the beginning of working but then start getting a lot of things wrong, stop. This usually means they are mentally fatigued.
With beginners, it’s important to focus on a few concepts at time to build a strong foundation without overwhelming with too information. Young kids can read music but like anything they learn it takes a lot of repetition.