Help with Piano Lessons.?

Question:I am giving piano lessons to a 10 year old. I am using the john thompson books. She is almost through the first book and I would like to add in another book to go along with the thompson method. I would like to give her some sort of strength exercise books. She is not ready for sheet music yet. I know when i took lessons back in 93 I had some books that had strength exercises with stick figures in them? Any clue what those were? Any recommendations what to add to her lessons?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am giving piano lessons to a 10 year old. I am using the john thompson books. She is almost through the first book and I would like to add in another book to go along with the thompson method. I would like to give her some sort of strength exercise books. She is not ready for sheet music yet. I know when i took lessons back in 93 I had some books that had strength exercises with stick figures in them? Any clue what those were? Any recommendations what to add to her lessons?

there is a couple huge positives to switching to bastien or alfred or even jon schaum method books (THEY HAVE COMPANION THEORY AND TECHNIQUE BOOKS AT EVERY LEVEL!!!)

if you have your head stuck on thompson, then i suggest you look into edna mae burnam technic books ---scale a day etc.
they go well with most methods....

try calidoscope or ust kids books with east notes. You could maybe write some up for her.

The Alfred Piano Series is pretty good for young players.

Please - do the world, yourself, and most importantly your student a favor and BURN the John Thompson books. Piano pedagogy has come such a long way since Thompson - it's not even funny.

Go with Alfred or Bastien or something like that ... but please Thompson has had its day, and its a good thing for piano students everywhere that it is over.

*** To give some background on my disdain for Thompson ... when I started teaching piano 12+ years ago, some of my first students were two sisters who had been studying with another teacher for about 3 years using the Thompson series. The girls were frustrated with the music and they couldn't even play 2 measures consecutively without having to pause. I switched them over to a comparable Alfred level book and their playing improved DRAMATICALLY in a week, and this was learning music that they had never seen before. I strongly believe it is worth it to make the switch.

***Additional Note:
I'm not trying to insult you or your teaching, but I would strongly encourage you to not fall into the trap of saying, "This is how I learned, and it worked for me ... so it will work for my students." I learned on the Leila Fletcher piano course. But I've never used it to teach my students. Why? Because I feel there are better ways to present the material, as well as the order in which new concepts are introduced. Can students learn from John Thompson, or Schaum (another course which I feel should no longer be used), or Fletcher or Hal Leonard ... yes. The question is finding the best way to teach your student.

To give some perspective on this - while you were taking lessons back in '93 - I was in a college library with other piano majors pouring over every ("literally") major piano method series - book by book, page by page - documenting and comparing how the concepts were presented; in what order they were presented; how much did the method rely on printing finger numbers; etc. There are vast differences in approaches, and if you're not familiar with them, then you can't be sure you are using the best method for student. I would encourage you to do a similar study on our own - and ask other teachers for their opinion and be sure to ask them why they think that - if they can't give you a practical reason for recommending something (i.e. "I think this {exercise, method, etc} is good for teaching {a specific skill} because {reason}) then you may want to do some more research before accepting that recommendation.

*** If want to discuss this in more detail, feel free to contact me through my profile. I think it's great your taking this opportunity to teach ... it's never "easy" if you're giving it the time and effort it requires, but the rewards are definitely worth it.

I would use the alfred books because they are the ones I used when i was learning and it helped me improve quickly. Then once she has gotten good at reading the music and can play fairly well then maybe the conservatory books along with the technical requirement books for conservatory because they are great.

i know what you want is a book that follows john thompsons but i'm affraid they haven't made one, the alfreds course provides different methods of training, you could use it with the book your on and i'm sure it would be ok, you would probably have to adapt it to suit the running order of the john thompsons! good luck