Teaching Your Kids To Play The Piano

We recently bought a 2nd hand piano because my girl seems very interested in learning to play. Before getting the piano, she was tinkling on my mom's keyboard. I've thought her to read the notes, so she is quite okay in playing. Initially, she just played with her right hand. Eventually, I took out my old piano books and encouraged her to play with both hands. She is better than me in one aspect: After playing the piece using the notes, she will commit the song to memory and play without the notes. That is one thing I cannot do.

Now that we've got the piano, the other 2 boys also will go over and tinkle about. So far all they play is Old McDonald Had A Farm, the chiming of the clock and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I'm trying to get D1 to learn to read notes. We're going bonkers with Old McDonald Had A Farm :)

I've opted not to send the kids to a piano teacher or music school. They just want to play for fun and I don't want to kill their passion with music exams. We will see how it goes a few years down the road. Plus, piano lessons these days are quadruple the price what my mom used to pay for my piano lessons. Just checking around, the average price now is about RM80-RM100 for beginners. I have 3 kids, that's too much money for me. I learned until Grade 5. I think I can teach my kids a little bit.

Anyway, I found some great stuff online. If you want to teach your kids to play the piano, you might find these helpful.

• Ten week note reading method by Jon Schmidt. I love these guy's music. I've downloaded his instructions and it is an interesting way of learning how to read notes. 
• Free music sheets for piano. Fun songs for your kids to play. They cater to different levels.
• More free music sheets. I downloaded Pachelbel's Canon in D here. Love that song.

I know there are more cool stuff out there to help our kids learn music. I'll keep this list updated as I go along. I'm also enjoying my piano playing once again. Haven't been playing for so many years.
Before I go, enjoy the magic of Jon Schmidt. He truly is a one of a kind pianist. Very inspiring.

This piece is called All Of Me and it was this piece that I was introduced to his music. I fell in love with it straightaway. Hope you like it too. Watch for the part where he uses his whole arm to play.