Hey my fellow busy parents,

Ever wonder how to keep up with all the activities with your little ones? Between classes, play dates, and everything else, it’s not easy to keep up with music practice, aural skills, and music theory — but here are some time-savers that have helped us a ton.

1. Play the songs they’re learning in the car while you drive. Even if they can’t play their instrument while you’re driving (unless they’re singers!), this mental practice goes a long way toward learning the music, memorizing it, and keeping it top of mind for when they are practising at home.
2. Teach rhythm while you drive, cook, or do whatever else — just tap out different rhythms and beats along to different songs.
3. Teach texture by asking your kids to pick out the different parts of a song: tap the drum beat, sing the bass line, can they hear the piano? What’s it doing? What about the guitar? Are there other instruments? Easy to do while driving or just hanging out listening to music.
4. Introduce different genres. Listen to songs from completely different genres — heavy metal, classical, pop, R&B — and ask them what’s different between them, and what they like and don’t like.
5. Teach them where music comes from. How do they think music is created? Just like learning that food comes from a farm, some kids seem to think music just comes out of the iPad or whatever device. Show them that they can create music too, even as early as three or four. Explain how someone created that song or piece — it’s amazing when they realize this, and that they can create music too. It seems small, but it opens up little minds to a lot of ideas.

Questions? Send me an email!

Sophie XO