First Piano Lesson

First Piano Lesson Certificates

How many of you have watched your students grow up before your very eyes? After summer break it seems like they’ve changed overnight. At certain ages they come back in a completely different stage of life!

I love teaching little ones, with their love of the teacher and their fresh sense of wonder at things that don’t impress our older students. And their humor! I had a darling student looking out the window at a neighbor using a hand pushed lawn mower, something we don’t see that often in our area. He had no idea what it was so I told him that kind of mower had been around for hundreds of years. He looked a little harder and said, “Wow! He doesn’t look that old.”

I thought that was so cute but as I thought about it later it made me realize how confused our students must be when we talk about music theory. I remember nodding my head and agreeing with my teacher when I secretly had no idea what she was explaining. “Four beats in a measure and a quarter note gets one beat,” just doesn’t mean much to a beginning student.

I was thinking about how students grow and change as I made the first piano lesson certificates. Will these little students be beginning years of music study, or will they take lessons for a while and then move on to something else? Even if they do what we have to remember is that piano lessons even for a short while introduce students to the art of playing a musical instrument. They learn something about the language of music and how to go about reading music. It is never a waste for children to broaden their horizons, even for brief periods.

I made these certificates to help make your younger students’ first piano lesson special. Do something really fun at the end of the lesson and give them this certificate and they will leave their first lesson with a big smile. Take a picture of this first day, too, because if they do stay with you for years, it will be a very special photo.

End of lesson activity

In case you are wondering what might be something fast and fun to do at the end of the lesson, here is an idea that always works for me.

•  Toss a ball back and forth to your student.
•  As each person catches it, they say the next letter of the music alphabet: A B C D E F G.
•  They will quickly learn that after G always comes A.
•  If they are older, try saying skips: A C E G B D F etc.
•  I like to use a big beach ball because even the little ones can catch it.

I hope you have a great year!