This is the best way I’ve come across to introduce the musical alphabet to kids who are not yet completely comfortable with their letters. I got this idea from let’s play music, a great blog about teaching music to young children.
I modified the animals in my version slightly. Based on my experience of which animal names kids find easiest to associated with letters, for instance the giraffe for ‘g’ can be confusing for some as they initially learn that ‘g’ is the hard version of the sound as found in gorilla.
Initially we talk about the alphabet, and I start demonstrating the keys names. Starting at the bottom of the piano and moving up we sing each of the letters together, taking extra time between ‘g’ and ‘a’. At the next lesson we might start to do this backwards, but in the beginning it’s enough just to move up the piano.
Then we use our piano builder to make a piano on the floor, and match up the characters to their “homes”. We keep the worksheets open for this, as they won’t have memorised it yet, we’re just making sure they understand how to find each of the notes.
Feel free to download the animal letters with worksheets and also the separate printable animal letters to cut out that I used above.
More for Preschool Piano
If you’re looking for more fun ideas for you preschool piano lessons, try these posts:
So pleased to see that you’ve found my idea useful!
that sounds great combination! fun and easy way to learn piano with these alphabet animal names for kids:)