Free Online Piano Academy and a Giveaway! ~ CLOSED~

Recently I was approached by FreePianoLessons4Kids.com with a FREE online music academy for teaching children 5-10 to play piano. Talk about exciting! I've shared piano learning programs on The Homeschooling Blog before, but never a program like this one. I think "free" is what really caught my attention.

From the creator's own words: I provide "online video piano instruction for free. Every single video lesson on the website is free (there is a charge to download supplemental activity pages and an mp3 listening album which corresponds to the lessons, but the lessons work fine without these supplemental materials). I now have 36 lessons live, and I add a new one each week. The lessons are geared for ages 5 to 10, but I've also heard from many adults who have been enjoying using my lessons. The lessons are simple and fun, yet also thorough, covering all aspects of a solid musical training, including fluency in note and rhythm reading, technique, and music theory." ~Joseph Hoffman

If you've ever paid for piano lessons you know how expensive they are. There's nothing wrong with paying someone to teach you or your children how to play the piano... it's just that not all of us can afford the expense. I LOVE that there's a solution for those of us without the means to afford traditional piano lessons!

I've watched a few of Joseph's lessons and they are clear, professional, and easy to follow. I think you'll agree this academy is worth further examination. I've also had the pleasure of examining his supplemental downloads and activity pages which sell for just $14 (and like he stated above, they're completely optional and not mandatory for following his lesson plans).

The Giveaway!

FreePianoLessons4Kids.com is offering 10 random reader's from The Homeschooling Blog the supplemental materials for lessons 1-20 absolutely free! 

These supplemental materials, while not required, are awesome if you're looking for worksheets, games, and activities for furthering your child's understanding of how to read musical notes and understand rhythm. The lesson plans retail for $14 and are provided as convenient downloads to your computer. The $14 download also includes an mp3 album which cooresponds to these initial lessons. There are 33 songs for your child to listen to as they learn how the songs should sound when appropriately mastered. Very cool!

If you're not one of the fortunate 10 to win these downloads, remember you can purchase them together for only $14. In my opinion they're well worth the price. I was given the downloads free to examine and was impressed with the quality of everything I received.

How to Enter:

You're odds of winning are high and I'm going to make this giveaway as easy as pie to enter. All you have to do is use Rafflecopter. If you don't see it below... it's still loading, so be patient! Rafflecopter makes hosting a giveaway painless for you and for me! lol When the giveaway concludes, Rafflecopter will even randomly select the winners. I'll then notify each winner via email and you'll have 72 hours to respond before another winner is selected.

Giveaway begins tonight: December 23, 2011 and will conclude on January 6th at 12:01 AM.

Choose any or all entry methods below (to increase your odds of winning). Good luck!

If you don't see the Rafflecopter giveaway widget just below.... try clicking HERE. 

Learning to Play Piano at Home... What an Awesome Christmas Gift Idea!

Are you still struggling with what to give your family this Christmas? It's hard to believe (or accept), but we only have a week 'till December 25th and there's not much time left for brainstorming. At our house we have Christmas all wrapped up, but I know too well that uncomfortable feeling of not being prepared... my hubby's birthday is Monday and I still don't know what to get him!

As for our children, one of their gifts came early this year. You might remember me sharing news of our home-based piano lessons, taught by yours truly with the help of Piano Wizard. I have no previous experience with the piano... and not much experience at all with playing any type of musical instrument. I had a few months on the saxophone when I was 15 (over 2 decades ago!), and a year of recorder when I was 10, but other than that, I'm musically illiterate.

I am preparing to show you a video of us using this AWESOME computer-based system, but it's been slow going. I had a full work schedule this week, and scads of dr. appointments for my son (who has Asperger's). We've had birthday parties to attend, TaeKwonDo belt testing and award's ceremonies, and my daughter had a talent show and Demo Team (TaeKwonDo) demonstration she was a part of. I'm exhausted! But... in a healthy way!

Since I'm at least a day away from sharing my own kiddos on video and time is so short, if you're considering this as a gift idea this year, I will share videos (not our own) here instead. lol Does that work?  Piano Wizard only takes a couple days to ship out, so you still have a couple days to order and not feel the stress of worrying if that package will arrive in time!

Here's what the gift of music might look like in your own home:

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions at all. My daughter has already asked me today if she can take her piano lesson, so I need to hop off the computer and hook up the keyboard! lol Then my son will want his turn. Pretty cool to see them excited to learn the language of music as we fill the house with melody. With Piano Wizard you're playing real music the very first lesson. The theory behind this approach? We all learn to speak before we learn to read or write! So why not learn to play (through color), before learning to read the actual musical notes? It's awesome for anyone, of any age... and I totally recommend you give it a try!

Homeschooling Piano Lessons... The Piano Wizard Academy

We're on a new adventure here at our house... one I hadn't anticipated taking at this time, but we couldn't be more excited! My husband is a musician (an awesome drummer... and I'm not just saying that!), but the rest of us don't play anything at all. I've wanted to learn to play the piano my entire adult life, but as a busy mom (without a piano), my prospects weren't looking so good. Sometimes the answers to life's little hick-ups are simpler to solve than we might ever imagine.


Such has been the case with our latest piece of learning technology! On Saturday... that is, just yesterday, we started experimenting with an awesome new computer program and lesson plan developed to teach ANYONE how to play the piano... simply by playing a game. This means that not only can I finally learn to play the piano, but I can assist my children in learning to play too!  We don't have to seek out an instructor and squeeze additional running around time into an already packed schedule. Furthermore, we're part of a training process that allows you to play the piano before you learn to read the music.

That might sound a little different, but when you think about language, and you'll likely agree that music is just that... a language, don't we all learn to speak before we learn to read, write, or spell? We're taught grammatical rules for our native tongue only after we learn to speak it. This same premise has been applied to learning to read music. The Piano Wizard's computer-based program allows you to enjoy the excitement of playing real music the moment you being your lessons.

What I'd like to do over the course of the next few months is share our piano learning journey here on The Homeschooling Blog. Since music is so essential (according to scientific study) for healthy brain development... including among other things better academic performance, I may even dedicate a full page to this program here on this blog.

I can't tell you how excited I am to be learning right along side my children. Homeschoolers do that all the time, but this is bigger than relearning a piece of forgotten history, this is like opening an entire new world!

Be sure to bookmark this site... that is, if you're interested in following our journey, and perhaps learning more about the product we've acquired. I'll be taking videos of my kiddos in action over the next few days! Remember too, one of my precious lambs has Asperger's Syndrome (meaning he's under the autism umbrella)... I'm especially anxious to see how he does with the Piano Wizard Academy, especially given his struggles in math. There's strong statistical evidence to support the theory that students who play a musical instrument do better in math... among other things. :)