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Scope and Sequence
Free sample Student Activity Book for Level 1
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"The Year Membership gives access to 6 Levels of entertaining music education for 3 to 7 year old children through about 22 hours of video and interactive coloring pages. Miss Karri introduces preschoolers to the keyboard characters, as well as the Grand Staff clefs. Kids will enjoy playing simple songs, identifying music direction, learning new rhythm notes and their beat value. Level 1 to 6 covers proper hand and finger position for the music scale, as well as staff note reading by pattern for voice, and keyboard."
KinderBach is piano/keyboard and music theory for little kids (aimed at ages 3-7). It can be used by classroom groups (see the website for details) or by parents. It's the online equivalent of sending your children to one or another of those preschool music groups: big on fun, but with a purpose as well. In style, it's reminiscent of Blue's Clues, particularly in the combination of real people with colouring-book backgrounds. There are fun story characters, each one associated with certain elements of the keyboard or of music; for example, there's a donkey whose house is built between two black keys, and a train station built over the groups of three black keys. The characters also have songs to reinforce the concept; sometimes the children help "play" the songs on the keyboard, for example by pressing the three black keys at once and getting a sound like a train whistle. There are many colouring/activity pages to print out, and they're usually completed along with the lessons. (They can be printed out all at once from downloadable files, or one at a time as they come up during a lesson. Have lots of paper handy if your kids are enthusiastic about colouring worksheets) The company is also very active with things like extra newsletters and seasonal colouring contests.
What equipment do you need for this? Some kind of a musical keyboard: it doesn't have to be a large or fancy one. If you're using an actual piano, it will have to be close to the computer you're using for the lessons. You'll also need a few basic things like crayons and "rhythm instruments" (a pot or something is adequate). The program incorporates lots of opportunities for movement, such as stretching up when high notes are played and getting down low for low notes./p>
Do you need to know anything about playing the piano? No, it's all there for you; the onscreen teacher teaches the lessons.
How fast do you go? Very young children would probably do just one session at a time; Crayons, who's slightly older than the target age, went faster and usually did a week's worth at a time. She got through several weeks of lessons before Christmas.
Then what happened? Some of the videos stalled on us partway through; this hadn't been a problem before, but we couldn't seem to make them work successfully after the first while. It turned out not to be a Kinderbach problem at all, but the result of changing to a wireless router; it just took us awhile to make the connection, and by the time we got it fixed, our trial subscription was just about over. So we didn't get through as much of the later material as I had hoped.
Any other downsides? Crayons really did like the lessons, even though much of it was geared for younger children; she says she liked something called "finger puppet basketball." (Mama Squirrel liked the Beat Bugs). The one thing that kind of set her back was a "tantrum" that the teacher had in one of the later lessons. It was meant to be about not getting frustrated with your efforts and making better choices about how to handle it when you don't like how your project is turning out; but it came across kind of strangely. Kind of like watching Mr. Rogers freak out.
How far do you get? By the end of Level 6, children are doing some of the following:
- Finger exercises, playing the C major scale with correct fingering.
- Play familiar songs with all notes both pre-staff and staff reading.
- Addition of note patterns both on and off the staff.
- Progress with composition methods.
- Read music on staff by pattern and by recognition of ‘C’ and ‘D’ locations.
What does it cost? An online membership for a year is $7.99 a month, paid in a 1-time annual payment of $95.88, or a $19.99 monthly subscription, billed monthly for a year. There are also DVD and audio packages (see the website for details).
Final Take: Using this regularly with a young child would be much like watching continuing episodes of an educational T.V. show, with the interactive components of filling out the printable sheets, playing movement games, playing along on rhythm instruments, and gradually using the keyboard more. Children as old as eight or nine might still enjoy some of the fun aspects of the program, although the music instruction would probably move too slowly for them.
For more reviews of this product, see the Review Crew Home Page.
Dewey's Disclaimer: This product was received free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.
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