How to Teach a Child to Play Piano: Teaching Piano at Home

Playing the piano is such a great skill.  This post will talk about how to teach a child to play the piano.  I have taught two of my children piano at home.  It can be hard, but super rewarding.

Music lessons can be really expensive.  I know this because my husband is a music teacher.  He taught lessons for the first few years of our marriage until he now teaches music at a school.  I get the sense that not many things strike fear in the hearts of parents more than teaching their own kids’ music lessons.

I also spent a fair amount of time teaching music lessons on my own.  That, of course, was after years and years of my own lessons.  

True life confession time, I was considering majoring in music — it’s a good thing I didn’t.  A house with 2 music majors would be a broke house indeed.  

ANYWAY.  I started teaching flute lessons when I was in high school.  I didn’t LOVE it, but the money was good and I really enjoyed playing my flute so I kept doing it until I hit nursing school.  It got too complicated at that point.  I will admit that I had a couple of REALLY good flute teachers, who gave me a real love for the flute and music in general.  I wanted to be that for the girls I taught.

{I also want to put a tip in for the fact that my best teachers didn’t have a doctorate, in fact — the one that did, probably was my worst teacher.  My favorite ones were college students — if you’re looking for a music teacher for your own kids I’d look no further from the local college, I bet they’d have some good ones to recommend!}

Fast forward quite a few years and we got our own piano — it’s a requisite when your husband’s a music teacher (we actually got it free, from someone wanting to get it out of their garage, it’s not in perfect shape but it still plays music pretty well).

I knew I wanted the kids to learn music but the thought of doling out hundreds of dollars/month to teach them what the basic notes were was laughable to me.  I mean, my husband is a MUSIC TEACHER.  But, like most things, it has fallen on me to teach my kids piano.  My mom actually taught me piano, and while I am no virtuoso, I can plunk through some good primary tunes.  Here are my 8 tips for teaching your own kids:

Teaching Piano at Home

1.  Take a deep breath.  It’s not going to be easy and you need to put your teacher hat on when you teach.  Since I taught other people’s kids I am able to do that.  Your kids are going to push you, just like they do every minute of every day.

2.  Pick a curriculum.  Obviously, if you’re teaching your kids piano you must know some piano of your own.  I just went with the books I had as a kid.  It makes it easy to progress.  I teach out of 3 books.  I do a John Thompson, and a “fun” book (which I have often found at Goodwill or a music store) and the Bastien series.

3.  Find some theory.  Since my kids don’t seem to (at least thus far, I haven’t started Princess P, yet) be true virtuosos theory is extra important as they will likely be switching instruments in the future.  Knowing the circle of 5ths is important and I love playing arpeggios while I’m waiting for them to get to the piano.  They pretend like they can play them too, but they can’t.  I have found great theory pages on the internet, as well as us going through some theory books.  I am a HUGE fan of being able to clap out rhythms as that is what saved my bacon in sight reading most often.

4.  Pick a day.  We do piano on Wednesday afternoons.  It’s our lesson time.  When it’s loosey-goosey it ends-up not being a lesson.  I will admit to taking off most of my pregnancy with Princess P (my patience was thin and sitting on the piano bench was horribly painful).  The benefit of teaching your own child is not wasting your time/money when they literally can’t practice (because they’re sick or whatnot).  I am not a piano nazi — we try.

5.  Have a notebook to write it down.  I write down all their assignments in the notebook, and what they need to be working on (as well as noting it in the music).  That way I don’t get to hear that they didn’t know “that’s what I wanted.”

6.  Get a metronome.  I don’t think I really understood how imporatant timing was until I went into band and started playing in large groups.  A metronome is unforgiving.  Just how I want to be as a teacher. 🙂

7.  Play duets.  Some of my favorite time with my mom was playing duets.  It’s fun to play together!  Also, when you tell them to come grab you to work on your duet, that gives you extra time to sort of slide into helping them practice.  I could never practice with my mom looking over my shoulder, but duets give you a reason to be there (I’m a fan of helping your kids as they practice, but I’m not sure it’s always worth the fights it causes).

I sometimes look like this during our lessons.

8.  Take another deep breath.  And re-evaluate if it’s really not working.  Teaching your own kids really isn’t for everyone!  BUT, if you can do it — it may just be the thing your kid remembers growing up, and when he’s called upon to play a hymn, he can remember that his mom taught him how to do it!  In reality, I’m not amazing at the piano.  My kids can’t go all that far before they outpace me — but until then it’s just them and me (and sometimes steam coming out my ears).

So, do you think I’m crazy for teaching my own kids!?  Tell me in the comments!

Be sure to check out my practical parenting series for more awesome parenting tips:

This post was originally written in 2015.  It has been updated