Why LPM?

Let’s Play Music - Teaching Philosophies


Let’s Play Music is an exciting, reputable music curriculum which teaches advanced musical skills to young children (starting age is 4-6) through play, experience and discovery! We are a complete three-year music course that emphasizes total musicianship through piano playing, singing, classical music, note reading, and ear training... and it’s accomplished through play. (Let’s Play Music has been around for 15 years.)

 A young child’s brain is not hard-wired and is actively developing circuits. By age 12, brain is hard-wired making it much more difficult to learn. LPM takes advantage of this early exposure.

 Piano playing dilemma with the young child – window is 3-9, most kids don’t start music instruction until 7, precious wasted time. LPM solves this dilemma.

 Let’s Play Music is a complete musicianship course and NOT just a piano course.
 We use minimal talking: children learn through play and repetition (not drilling, but repeating in fun and different ways.) The ears are more responsive to singing than talking.

 We believe experience precedes learning. (i.e. If teaching a child about a red ball, we give them the ball and let them play with it, bounce it and experience its characteristics instead of lecture about its traits and attributes. Then once they have experienced a ball, we start to point out or "label" its attributes.)

 Full body involvement: research has shown that the more senses involved in the learning process, the more the concepts are internalized. So we use the eyes, ears, hands, and full body movements to learn concepts usually taught on paper.

 LPM focuses on both ear training AND note reading. We develop these skills simultaneously, rather than one before the other.

 Complete musicianship means the child can read music and know what it sounds like in his head, so sight singing, harmonizing, composing and improvising become second nature. People will say the child is "talented", but we know it was from the right exposure at the right time.

 Flexible staff: We use the moveable DO; tonic = DO (That means that if we are in the key of G, DO is G, key of F, DO is F.) In this way, children learn and solidify music relationships including intervals and the major scale, before they can read and write music on the staff.
Curriculum Foundation: everything we do is researched-based
The detailed lesson plans are centered in the teachings of the music masters Kodaly, Orff and Dalcroze. The lessons are skillfully sequenced to build on the next and thus keep the student eager to learn the next musical concept or skill. Each activity has a clearly defined purpose. We use original music to teach musical concepts and encourage the development of sight reading, harmony, melody, and rhythm skills in such a way that a child internalizes these skills. After completing our three year curriculum, students are prepared to pursue private piano lessons or other instrumental instruction.
Kodaly: took ancient solfeg syllables and added handsigns that represent the function of each step of the major scale. He taught inner hearing/audiation, patterning (cadence patterns, pull to DO, tonal center), and taught with folk songs.

Orff: believed instruments were essential to teaching music and rhythm. He believed the order of instruments should be: 1. Body Percussion 2. Voice 3. Simple Percussion Instruments 4. Barred Instruments

Dalcroze: created Eurhythmics which are movements that fit rhythms, promoting audiation and correct performance of rhythms. ( i.e. walking to quarter notes, skipping to dotted notes.)

You will see these methodologies in all of our Let’s Play Music classes.