These resources are really helpful with learners roughly age 4 to 6, but can be valuable to learners of other ages. Take a look and download them for free.
Hot Cross Buns
This page from ‘Piano Success’ – our e-book which accompanies our Young Beginners Piano Course – is a great tune for young piano pupils. Well-known and easy to internalise and play, it follows the format of lots of pieces in Piano Success by using simple note names written above the words of a familiar song or rhyme. The pupil might not use the paper copy very much as parent or teacher may help them learn by rote, but they may be able to start practicing the skill of reading the music from the page whilst using pieces in this format. Or perhaps if they have learnt other tunes using C, D and E they could read and de-code this one themselves.
Tip Toe
Using the same format to Hot Cross Buns this piece uses just three notes again. You can hear the tune on this youtube video at roughly 1min so that it can be internalised first.
Merrily We Roll Along – Combined notation
This type of piece also features heavily in our e-book and is a great stepping stone between learning pieces simply from note names and reading full music notation from the stave.
Jingle bells – Combined notation
Ideal for beginners at Christmas time. It’s the simplest well-known Christmas tune. Learners just need to be able to successfully use all five fingers of their right hand and find notes C-G.
Jingle bells – Right hand Only
If learners have begun to read some treble stave notation they can use this version.