Piano Lover

Elina's one lucky girl. For her 4th birthday, my parents got her a piano. A real piano. They didn't even tell me and B about it. We found out when they delivered it on her birthday. Boy, were we all surprised! We had to move everything around in the playroom to make it fit.

First we had our neighbor's sister (JC) come over to introduce the piano to Elina. JC is a music education student in college, so she was excited to show Elina the piano. She only came 3 times and Elina is already really into the piano. Unfortunately, JC had to go back to school, so we had to find a new teacher close by.

Originally, we were only going to have Elina go to lessons once every 2 weeks because she's so young. When you start your kids on instruments at a really young age, the biggest fear is burn out. I want Elina to enjoy playing the piano and to enjoy practicing (for the most part). So we were going to take it slow and see how things progressed during the school year. Well, after a few weeks, Elina absolutely loves the piano. She wants to practice all the time. I practice with her for 10 minutes a day, but she'll go off and practice on her own throughout the entire day. It's really amazing! Now she takes lessons once a week with Miss T. We'll keep the lessons going based on Elina's level of interest, so if we need to slow it down a little, we will. But for now I'm just glad that she's so excited about it.

Elina is really hard on herself and always wants to get things right. It was hard for her to hold half notes in the beginning. So during practice one day, she got so upset with herself and she covered her eyes. I told her to take it easy and to just play 2 more measures and then we'd stop. She played the 2 measures and we ended the lesson. An hour later, she went to the piano and practiced the half notes again by herself. Then she told me to come listen. She played the little piece perfectly and I was so proud of her. I was impressed that she just went off on her own to practice again to get it right.

Elina has been picking the notes and the rhythm up pretty well. She's also pretty good at sitting still for her 30 minute lessons. She has also been able to remember a few songs by memory. So here is Elina playing "Twinkle Twinkle" on the piano. She loves to play this song!