DD(7) wants to learn an instrument - some advice please

[mayathebee]

DD has been asking about learning an instrument recently. I'd like her to enjoy playing music (I started learning the flute a couple of years and it's a brilliant way to relax) but I don't want to waste a lot of money and I'm not sure the best way to go about it. These are my concerns:

She has said that she'd like to learn the keyboards but I'm not sure whether that's just because she knows that they can have keyboard lessons at school rather than really liking the instrument.

She probably can't start lessons at school until September so we'd have to wait or look for a private tutor. The school lessons would be less hassle for us but they are still expensive and are short and in groups. Would they be okay or are private lessons better (value)?

I think you need to play a little every day to improve and enjoy playing but I don't want to splash out a lot of money on a keyboard for her to get bored in a few weeks. It would be good for her to try it out first but is she more likely to lose interest without being able to play at home too?

Thanks for any advice. I want to give her the best chance of getting a good start and really loving playing.

I can't comment on the instrument choice. I learned the piano and we have the one I learned on as a child, one daughter doesn't want to learn anything and the other does violin. but the lessons at school sound similar to what my daughter does. there are about 4 of them in the class, it is about 20 minutes long for 10 weeks a term. costs £4 a lesson I think. Nowhere near as good as private lessons obviously, most of them don't practice, very mixed ability and very short plus of course the teacher has to help tune 4 instruments at the start of the lesson BUT for her it is really just a bit of an extra hobby so £4 is affordable (she is mainly a dancer which costs a fortune) and it gives her a chance to learn something, by chance a couple of her good friends do it so she enjoys it and she has learned a lot (or is naturally very talented who knows) so for us it works well but it depends what you want out of it. Some of the children did the lessons for a year and then moved on to have private lessons outside of school so they could make more progress but they had some basics and had learned to read music in that year. I have said to my daughter that if she wants to carry on with the school lessons in primary school that is fine but when she goes to secondary school she would have to change to private lessons as the others aren't offered and at that point would have to decide what to drop, violin or dancing. one violin lesson a week would cost about the same as 4hrs of dancing.