Musical Alphabet Cards: Next Steps

A few weeks ago I posted about learning the musical alphabet, and how we can use some games to get young kids ready for piano lessons.  Now that the little ones have a really good grasp of the order of the 7 ABC cards we need to read music, we are going to add a new game into the mix.

One concept that is really important in reading music is recognizing patterns, and the very first pattern we learn is that the musical alphabet repeats.  A lot.  Over and over, all the way up the keyboard.  Seeing this progression helps students to make sense of all those black and white keys and learn the assignments of the various letters to those keys.

Our next game is going to help your youngster learn how the musical alphabet repeats.  For this game, you will need at least 2 sets of our musical alphabet cards (but you can use as many as you want).  Have your child put the cards in order just like they have been doing, but this time, once they place the G, explain to them that the musical alphabet is really just a never ending, repeating pattern.  Then we show them that after the G, we put the A again, and continue the pattern from there.  Don’t get into the details with them, showing them will do most of the explaining for you.  Then, ask your child to put them ALL in order again, repeating the pattern ABCDEFG ABCDEFG over and over until all the cards are used up.  You can even begin to race them (I turn my cards upside down so it naturally slows me down and I don’t have to LOOK like I’m letting them get a head start).

Once your child has a firm grasp of this game, try starting the same game on a different letter (like D).  They can continue to build the musical alphabet from any letter, but the pattern never really changes.

Have some fun with these cards and repeating the pattern (I’ve been known to have a string all the way around my living room, over furniture, and even into the backyard!).  We’ll change the game up big time in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned.