Introducing musical notation as the note family with characters to represent each note makes a tricky concept immediately accessible. This way, children find the note names and their time values so much easier to remember. Make sure to explain that these are their nick-names to help us to tell which is which, and point out the proper part of the name too.
Introducing The Note family
- First of all using the sheets below, clap or tap the sounds and lengths of the notes together.
- Then play Up and Down The Escalator first with Big Brother Crotchets (1 beat notes)
- Then with Mummy Minims (2 beat notes), and then with Daddy Semibreves (4 beat notes).
- Younger children won’t be able to play quavers at first as this requires more control, so leave them for now.
- Play this in both hands.
- Using the work sheets have a quiz, where you can take it in turns to test each other, guessing which notes you are playing. Use wooden sticks or a drum to tap the rhythms, and you can have lots of fun marching around the room to Magic Feet Follow the Beat.
- Play these games often, to build a firm understanding, and easy familiarity with the names of the notes and their values.
These song and work sheets below are an excellent way to practice and help to make first piano lessons fun! (Click on the images to download and print)
Don’t miss the other lessons in the First Piano Lessons Series :
The Easiest Way To learn The Notes
Fingers! – Learning Piano Fingering
The Note Family eBook
I have found this approach to introducing children to music note values highly effective over my years of teaching. As you will see from the posts across this site, I use this approach in a variety of different ways. But one of the most engaging ways is through storytelling. I’m delighted to say that I now have an eBook with a number of the most popular stories that I tell about The Note family and all their adventures in magical music land!
You can check out more about the book below.
[Product id=19905]
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Viviene Morrison says
January 8, 2018 at 9:32 pmThis is so cool, I am definitely going to start teaching kids and this is the best I have seen. Excellent!
Sara Mullett says
January 10, 2018 at 10:07 amThanks Viviene! So glad you found us! Don’t forget to subscribe to keep up to date with our latest posts and printables. Sara
Melissa says
March 26, 2017 at 2:29 amHello this is really helping me but I do not understand the family notes can you show them in the abc in the keyboard which one is which or explain better.
Sara Mullett says
March 26, 2017 at 12:14 pmHi Melissa, The Note Family is really intended to help teach the time values of music notes, if you need help learning the position and note names on the music stave or keyboard it is explained here in ‘The Easiest Way To learn The Notes’ – http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/first-piano-lessons-for-kids/
Camilo Baracaldo says
January 30, 2017 at 5:24 pmThis lesson is brilliant!! I don’t know if you know Spanish, but, is there any translation for the Clock Song?. It would be very useful for me to have one, as I have a 6-year-old student. Thank you! All your lessons are amazing!
Sara Mullett says
January 31, 2017 at 10:42 amHi Camilo! Thank you! I’m so glad you’re finding my lessons useful! Actually we do have a complete Spanish edition of my First Piano Lessons eBook – http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/spanish-ebook/ It does includes The Clock Song, but when it came to translating this sone, we decided to keep the song in English as the rhythm of words/notes really didn’t work in Spanish – and my Spanish friend who did the translation suggested that as most Spanish children are learning English, this simple, repetitive rhyme is perfect practice for that! But check out the Spanish eBook, I’m sure you’d find it very helpful! All the best! 🙂
Cassie says
December 20, 2014 at 12:23 pmThank you for having these posts! I’m about to start teaching and I had no idea where and how to start, but now I know! Thank you for writing!
Sara Mullett says
January 4, 2015 at 12:31 pmI’m so delighted you’re finding them useful Cassie 🙂
Lisa says
October 1, 2013 at 3:44 pmHi,
I absolutely LOVE your work, it is so helpful! I’ve played piano for years and a family asked me to teach their daughters… I had no idea where to start!
I noticed that the links you clicked to download the documents don’t work, they take me to a random page.
Is there anyway I could still get them?
Thank you!!
Sara says
October 2, 2013 at 11:12 amThank you for your kind comments 🙂 Sorry you have had problems downloading the free resources, but we are currently updating the site, and the free resources will soon be available included in their relevant posts, rather than separately. This will take a couple of weeks to complete so do visit again soon.If you like Let’s Play Music on Facebook or Google+ we will announce when it is all done.
Sara_LetsPlayMusic says
November 5, 2013 at 11:34 amHi Lisa,
I’m so sorry that I seem to have missed your comment – so glad that you’ve found the site helpful!
We’ve just had a reshuffle of our free resources and i’ve been going through the process of changing all of the links – you should be able to download the music from the song post that you want to play or you can find a list of all of our free resources here: http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/free-resources.
Hope they help!
Thanks and apologies again for the late response,
Sara
F says
September 18, 2013 at 9:54 pmthis is just BRILLIANT for kids – I love it. Thanks
Sara_LetsPlayMusic says
September 18, 2013 at 11:47 pmMany thanks, we hope the First Piano Lesson resources are useful to you! 🙂