It can be a challenge to teach younger kids, especially things like playing musical instruments. This series provides a simple, attractive approach to teach piano to the younger students. Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear guide your students through the lessons, introducing concepts in an easy-to-understand and enjoyable way. The lessons read almost like a story, and they start at the very beginning by talking about the sounds of the piano and proper positioning. Kids will progress to playing simple songs on the groups of black keys, then proceed to finding notes and playing songs on the white keys. By the end of the Book 1, kids know and can play five of the seven notes. The lessons and songs in Book 2 get progressively more challenging as the student keeps learning additional notes and concepts. In Book 3, they start learning chords, and by the end of Book 4, they will have learned about various musical styles, composers, reading music, and identifying rhythms and melodic patterns. There are also CD's to accompany each level of lesson and discovery books, so the student can hear how the examples and songs sound. A CD symbol in the book shows where you can use the CD's in the lesson, and it also has all of the music discovery songs. A lesson assignment book provides assignment pages, practice records and lesson evaluations. Also, there are fun, musical adventure coloring books for each level. To help you organize the extras, a teacher handbook has lesson plans and teaching tips. Everything you need to develop your little Mozart. ~ Melissa
