Piano Lessons

Every three weeks, a breath of fresh musical air blows through our home. Yuuko-san arrives from Morioka on the train to sing and clap and play piano with us. In-home lessons are one aspect of Japanese life that I truly appreciate. Need two piano lessons in the afternoon? Want to schedule during the toddler's nap? Teenage babysitter away at cross country practice? No problem; the teacher will come to you and teach in your home. It's brilliant.



Yuuko-san is a lovely person. She is a classical teacher and uses the Suzuki method, which we wanted to continue after our positive experience in the U.S. (thank you, Jonella!!) She also teaches us some elements of voice, as well as sharing a bit of Japanese culture at each lesson. Today, she brought us ripe persimmons from the tree in her yard: an autumn treat in Japan.

At the end of the lesson, we always have tea. I make American or English tea and we try always to have an American baked goodie of some type to share. And, as she asked when we first began the lessons last year, we help Yuuko-san with her conversation skills by chatting about the season or travel or music or some other general topic. Or Matthew entertains us with his toddler silliness.

Because our teacher travels so far to see us, our lessons are far apart. This means we have to work hard to stay motivated between lessons and keep up our schedule of practicing each morning after prayer time. It's the first part of the school day--even before math, which used to take priority. This is part of my renewed focus on the arts for this year, but it is important always to have a set time of day for practice or other things easily take over. We have learned this the hard way. On many days in the past, we found ourselves at bedtime without having practiced at all.

Suzuki piano is a bit different from other methods in that the children spend a lot of time with rhythm play, singing the notes of songs, and training their ears to hear notes and tone. Joseph plays many classical and folk pieces without reading music, but by Katie's level, note-reading is also an important part of lessons and practice time.



In addition, we try to listen to CDs of the children's music from their lesson books once a day. Katie is also listening weekly to the CD for the next book. It is my job to put the CDs on, but I have been having a hard time remembering to do this lately. It's another thing that needs to be tied to something we do every day, but the current plan isn't working. As with any other part of our schedule that gets broken, I will tweak it and rearrange and see what other plan will work better.

It's worth the time and effort to hear the beautiful music the children play and to hear them singing together during the day. I love to hear music in the house and nothing is better than music we make ourselves.