Music lessons for 4 year olds?

[letsblowthistacostand]

What sort of music lessons would you all suggest for a 4 year old? DD1 very much enjoys listening to music, singing at nursery and other groups and she has a tuneful voice and decent sense of rhythm. What could she do in the way of (semi)formal lessons? 4 seems very young for anything like individual piano lessons--I'm looking for a middle ground between that and Jo Jingles.

Any suggestions?

Some music schools and colleges have childrens music schemes which start at preschool age - they would be doing singing and rhythm games plus maybe hearing different instruments and styles of music. Up here the specialist music school does them - DS started with them, then moved up to group instrumental lessons when he was about 7.

You need to find a group that offers general musicianship classes - something along the lines of a Kodaly based organisation such as
Colourstrings or Kindermusik. I think it depends on where you are based. There are some in London (Trinity Guildhall for example) but it is very competitive to gain places and children don't always make the cut to progress to instrumental lessons.

Sometimes the county music schools may offer something - in my area there are Saturday lessons offered by the county for children to sing, play percussion instruments and gain general music skills before moving on to instrumental lessons.

Otherwise, if you have an independent provider of pre-school music classes in your area you could approach them to see if they run musicianship classes. This is something I do for children up to 6 years old prior to starting formal lessons with piano or flute. It gives children a grounding in the basics before settling on a particular instrument.

Thanks both of you! That sounds exactly like what I want. Off to google kindermusik.

Monkey Music do a class for 3 & 4 year old which is supposed to introduce them to the instruments in quite a run way. They dont' run it everywhere though - here they just do the ones for up to 3s which are more general musical fun.

Shelling Peas ideas sound very good though, if you have any on offer where you are.