I currently run my own pre-school music classes (for 18 months - 4 year olds) and am thinking of starting some small classes for 4-6 year olds in the new year. I feel there is a gap between children accessing music when they are young, then starting school and having little access to musical activities until they are about 7 and start an instrument.
I was just wondering if anyone had experience of using Dogs and Birds in a group situation. Do you think it would be suitable? My idea is to have both a piano and a keyboard in a room so that two children could sit at each instrument. Parents would stay and help/learn too.

After developing the method and using it for many years on a one to one basis, I (Elza) began to use it for group teaching two years ago.

I have been teaching in an infant school – with groups of four year olds, five year olds and six year olds.

I only use keyboards rather than pianos during group lessons. The maximum number of students I have taught in groups is 12, using 6 keyboards (two students playing simultaneously on each keyboard). I know of a teacher who is doing the same with a whole class, using 15 keyboards with 30 students. One advantage of keyboards is that they can be turned off. This is good for discipline. I do not let any student turn on their keyboard until everybody is ready.

I approach each piece in the same way. We start by singing through the piece with the keyboards switched off. When the group is ready we switch on the keyboards and all sing and play together.

A big advantage of the book for group teaching is that you can use the blank notes edition for the stronger students and the animal notes edition for the weaker ones.

I have found that many of the youngest students have difficulty with the right and left hand during the Rhythm Exercises. Particularly at a young age they find it difficult to distinguish between left (bottom) and right (top). What I do is use coloured pencils and draw a red line all the way through the top notes and a blue line all the way through the bottom notes. I then put a tiny red mark on their right hand with a pen and a blue mark on the left hand (or you can use coloured stickers).

The keyboard/singing lessons in the school have been quite successful. It was remarked at the Christmas concert this year that the children sang much better than usual. I did not teach them for the Carol service, but obviously it has been very beneficial for them to have been singing Dogs and Birds throughout the year.

I also taught groups in a Montessori Nursery School. Here I did not ask the children to play the keyboard but I taught them to sing by introducing the musical animals using the book. I put simple words to the melodies. The children really enjoyed this and at an early age (3 or 4) they can remember the notes easily. In this case also, the performance at the Christmas Carol Concert was noted to be exceptional. Now one of my colleagues has taken over teaching the children at the nursery school using this method.

In my experience all the children (both in the infant and the nursery schools) really enjoy learning in groups using this approach. There are many ways to adapt Dogs and Birds to group lessons. We wish you success with this.