Your Young Child’s Future

You have a young child, age 3 or 4 years old and you wonder, “What can my child do now, and how will it benefit them later?”, “What matters at this age?”, “Will these lessons, games, practices, or activities make a difference?”.  Those are tricky questions because it’s very hard to know how to prioritize your child’s activities.  How will you know which ones will benefit them in the long run, and if they do, how will you even be able to tell?

What we do know is that those questions are tremendously important because this particular moment in your child’s life is precious and you only get one shot to make the most of it.  We only wish we could predict the future, and see the possibilities for our children before they happen to help us make these tough decisions.  Everyday there’s always more and more research to help us navigate our world, but what can be even more helpful is learning from the experience of others.  If you’re ready to see the results and experience of one of our current students, scroll down and hit play.

In our experience at Jensen’s Yamaha Music School, we’ve seen first-hand, over and over just how profoundly our music classes affect the lives of our students.  The children can begin them as young as 3 years old, and what they learn stays with them for a lifetime.  What’s even more amazing is watching a  student become a musician.  They begin classes with little to no experience, playing with just one hand simple melodies (as you will see in the video), and after a few years they will be playing with both hands, moving them fluidly through many positions on the piano keys, gaining control over their finger strength and speed, and will be able to play expressively.

In this video you will meet a little girl named Melayne.  The first part of the video is from 2012, when she was just 5 years old.  She was 1 year into the Junior Music Course (JMC).  The footage of her playing was recorded for one of our “Why I Love Music” video contests.  She came close to winning the grand prize!  Over the next few years, she continued attending classes, finishing JMC and completing the next course Junior Extension Course.  This year she continues to attend weekly classes in the Junior Advanced Course curriculum and has added weekly private lessons with one of our certified Yamaha teachers.  You can see how expressively she plays her music, she can play in many different keys and musical styles, and she can even play some of her favorite pop pieces like “Star Wars Main Theme” or “Space Oddity” by David Bowie.  The music lessons she began 5 years ago has given her the gift to express herself through music, as well as the ability to learn favorite songs.

What you don’t see or know from the video is how hard she worked over those years of studying music.  How she didn’t always want to practice, and how her repertoire stayed pretty narrow for some time.  But with her persistence and the patience and encouragement from her parents, as well as their commitment to her musical training, she was able to go very far, at her own pace.  Some parents get discouraged if their child seems to stall and learn to accomplish few songs for a while, it’s the patience that proves to be the best virtue so the child is given the time to grow and develop in their own way and in their own time.

Eventually it all comes together, when the child discovers their own capability, whether it’s in playing the piano, singing, or learning a new instrument, they discover and develop their inner musician.  And that is the most rewarding part of a child taking music lessons, is watching them become a lifetime musician.