REVIEW: KinderBach

 
You may remember that our Composer of the Month this month is J.S.Bach.  Today, I'd like to tell you about different sort of Bach...KinderBach.   As the name hints, KinderBach is an online piano course for young children.  I was given access to the Online Piano Lesson Membership with Teacher Corner to try for six months, and though my six months is not yet over, the KinderBach lessons are well underway!

KinderBach is an entertaining online tool to teach young children music theory, keyboarding and piano instruction.  It is geared for the very young child aged 3-7 years old.  At first I was skeptical that a three year old could learn piano- (apparently, not everyone has my Judah for a 3 year old!) I decided I would try the program out with Adele' (the five year old) as my guinea pig.  The truth of it, though, is that whenever it was time to do KinderBach, all four of the children- from 3 to 10 years old, would flock to the piano in excitement.  And Judah, even at three, was able to follow a long with all the lessons we have watched thus far.  I'd say it is absolutely ideal for the 3-5 year old, as the videos are made to be as entertaining as educational and are made with a short-attention span in mind. 




Each video lesson runs somewhere between 2 and 3 minutes and within each lesson, bright colors, silly songs and do-alongs abound.   Children wind up dancing, stomping or playing rhythm instruments to the beat.  There are six different skill levels and 10 weeks of lessons within each skill level, with four lessons a week.  Because the children had no experience with piano except their homemade songs and keyboard tickling, we began at the very beginning.  (It's a very good place to start.)  Level 1 begins by introducing (and mapping) the keyboard, introducing high/ low notes, and quarter notes and then moves on to half notes, fingering, beat values and teaching rhythm with the use of the piano and rhythm instruments and different notes.  By the end of level one, the student should be able to play simple songs. 



In addition to the video lessons, KinderBach provides you with printable coloring pages to reinforce the topics just learned/watched/danced which were just as fun for Adele' to do as the videos.  We compiled all her pages into a folder for her own 'piano book'.  She was so excited to do each lesson, I often doubled-up on the lessons so she would do two a day because she didn't want to stop!





I should mention too~ the whole program (videos, printable materials and website) is very easy to use and navigate.  As a parent, and a techno-dweeb (and not in a smart way), I appreciate that.

 

The  KinderBach Online Piano Lesson Membership with Teacher Corner is usually $130.00 per year but for a limited time, you can get the program for $99.88 per year.  This works out to about $7.99 a month~ and will get you over 240 video lessons accessed by computer, iPad, Android Tablet, Kindle Fire or Nook, story books, coloring pages, songbooks, activity pages and all the materials in the teachers' corner.