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My wife and I are both intermediate-advanced piano players. (For reference, I am currently learning Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, movement 3). We have 3 children, ages 3, 4 and 6. All of our kids love 'playing' on the piano - like their parents . Anyway, I started my daughter a fe months ago with a local piano teacher using John Thompsons Teaching Little Fingers to Play. She breezed through all pieces in the book in 3 months. We supplemented is book with the first 'Dozen a Day' book and some scales (she currently plays D flawlessly - both hands. We picked this method because it happened to be the same method both of us learned with. Having said that, m wife and I both started later (in second grade).

Question:
What is your opinion regarding the next book to work on? I can't find a site that easily outlines the Thompson learning method. I don't know if we should continue with Teaching Little Fingers to Play More, orThompson's first grade book. Any opinions?.?.?

3 months is about "normal" for any primer book. It'll get tougher and more time-consuming as the levels go up.

I haven't use that particular volume (Teaching Little Fingers to Play) in 8 years. It didn't impress me back then, and I doubt I'd ever use it again. John Thompson books go very fast and don't have much room for development of skills. And be wary of excessive finger numbers.

My suggestion is to switch her to one of the more recent method book series such as Succeeding at the Piano (by Helen Marlais), Piano Adventures (by Faber and Faber) or Alfred Premier (by Alexander and Mier, et. al). You will likely see some dramatic improvements in your daughter's musical understanding.

Best wishes!

I love love love Thompson. It moves along pretty quickly in a classical manner and needs supplementation for all but the extraordinarily bright. maybe from the 4 part method books.

I also like the first several Suzuki books.. they are so logically organized. Generally, I do not like the 4 part modern method books. I think I would like them if they were in one book.

Good luck - a good teacher is a real plus.

and movement 3 of the Moonlight is a blast!!!

I believe in teaching a lot of fun exercises (without sight reading), scales and arpeggios to beginners.. Teaching the fingers to be able machines enable the student to absorb sight reading so much better. I really try to convey a sense of 'fun in rigorous practice'. Most students become infected.

heh

I start a lot of my students with John Thompson's Teaching Little Fingers to Play (whiting out nearly all the finger numbers). Usually before moving on to "Home on the Range" I begin them on Book 2 of Hal Leonard. It's a bit easier to begin with but I think it's great for consolidation of skills, paying more attention to accenting and other techniques. As they move through this book I add the last few pieces of JT. I have Teaching Little Fingers to Play More and though I don't use it as a method book it's great as a source for supplementary material to keep up work on quavers which don't feature for a while in the Hal Leonard.

I think it's good to draw from a number of methods (or other materials of this level) so that students encounter a mix of styles. I find that working from a single method means that students become too accustomed to particular hand positions, note patterns or printing styles and feel uncomfortable when they eventually encounter something different.

I'm assuming your 6 year old is the one that breezed through a book in 3 months....just a thought that you might like her to breeze through some other books that are simple enough....even in addition to staying on track with a level type book....Faber and Faber have several that are good...they are all primer level....you might see if those are favorable.....I can be more specific if you want just let me know. It's great that all of you play.

rada

Do you think 6 is an appropriate age to start given both parents are quite musical - I don't want to 'push' to hard...

What does your daughter's teacher say about what book to go to next?

A more than appropriate question.

Shouldn't your daughter's piano teacher be guiding these pedagogical decisions and not her parents? What's the problem with this teacher?

In any case, my first thought is to get your daughter out of any materials that her parents used when they were her age. It might seem sweet and nostalgic to the parents to pass down their books to their offspring, but I think your daughter needs her own - and preferably more progressive - beginning piano materials.

Same thought as Peter and P88. This is a question to ask your child's teacher, who knows his student and what he has set up at this stage, assuming this is a competent teacher.

You haven't had kids who bring to lessons their parents' old Beyer books, eh?? How that book manages to stay in print is beyond me.

Just FYI:

Dozen a Day is not a method book, it's a collection of exercises.

Suzuki books are not method books, they're repertoire collections used in the application of the Suzuki method.

The whole point of a method is to provide a more holistic approach to complete musicianship - repertoire, concepts, technique, and theory.

Particularly with the Suzuki books, that can be downright dangerous and result in frustration for both the teacher and the student without the understanding of how they are intended to be used.

While I don't think there is anything pedagogically 'wrong' with the Thompson books, I think there are much better options available today. While the core skills and information that we need to teach our students has not changed much over the years, the methods we can use to impart that knowledge have drastically improved. For example, I can only imagine how many students breezed through TLFTP without learning to read a single note- but who became very good at observing the finger numbers provided for each note!