Darci and I sat at her keyboard one day in early May for her weekly lesson. We began as always with review. I showed Darci a flashcard with an individual note on the staff, and she told me its letter name. Identifying each note correctly on her first try, she showed that she had memorized her note names, and proudly took the cards from me and shuffled them back into a neat pile on her stand.
“Wait, wait, Darci, now we have to play them!” I protested.
“Why?” she asked.
Why? I considered how best to answer this. Because this is your piano lesson? Darci is six. I decided that this answer probably would not suffice. So we proceeded to learn by doing.
Darci was learning to play the song "Do-Re-Mi," from The Sound of Music. I put the first line of the song in front of her and gave her two options: she could either play the notes, or she could just name them. Darci paused briefly. Then she began to play.
“Do…a…deer…a…fe..male… deer…” I reached for the paper, but she quickly burst out the next words and proceeded to sing the whole song.
After her trademark finale grin and long held vibrato, I asked Darci how she knew those notes. She pointed out where each note resided on the staff, and showed how she used that information to locate the notes on the keyboard.
“Do-Re-Mi has three brand new notes in it,” I told her. “We're going to have to find them on the keyboard before we can play the rest of the song.” Darci agreed, and I pointed out that she already knew what these notes looked like. She found her notecards, and we proceeded to work on the brand new notes.
When it came time for Darci's recital, I was so happy with her progress. Even though she's only six, I really appreciate the fact that Darci asks Why. I hope she continues to do so, because it puts her practice into context, and enriches her understanding of music.
Check out Darci's "Do-Re-Mi" recital:
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