Beautiful Piano Music

Zhara in the music room practicing.
Notice the roller skates, she doesn't even take them off for this.

Zhara has been playing piano now for about 4 months. She is doing an amazing program called Simply Music. It truly is absolutely outstanding. It is music taught as though it was a foreign language, which frankly, it kind of is. So that the kids learn to "speak" it first by immersion -- playing it -- and then they slowly introduce the reading part of it. That way the kids don't get bored playing scales and such. It is amazing. It is basically teaching kids how to play by ear, and THEN also teaching them to read the music on top of it.

It has been such a gift for us. Zhara loves music, but struggled with traditional methods. She can honestly play so many complex songs already. Like close to 17. She practices every day. She enjoys the piano so much, because she CAN play the songs so quickly, that I don't even have to cajole her to practice most of the time. She's playing blues, and classical, and pop songs, and to me it is unreal how good she is at these complex songs after only four months of lessons. The lessons are group lessons, and one parent attends as well, so it isn't easy for us, but it is totally worth it.

Right now we just have a keyboard, as pianos are expensive and hard to come by really cheaply in Utah -- Mormon kids play them some piano, let me tell you. So, we are thinking for Christmas, that we are going to ask the grandparents to contribute to the "buy a decent used piano" fund instead of buying toys and individual presents. We'll see if they're interested, but Zhara would love it. She yearns for a real piano, and I want to hear her play more on a real one. She practices on one in class, but never at home, and you can tell she misses it when she's here.