Sheet Music

For Christmas, I ended up getting a little piano for the kids. It wasn’t expensive at all and was from Melissa and Doug. Since it was on sale, I decided to get it for my 1 year old son L to see what he would do with it.

The kids didn’t play with the piano much at first. I liked the novelty of it and would brush up on my piano skills (what little I had left of it) to play the songs they had included with the piano. It was fun and I left it along for a while after the first few days.

One morning, my 7 year old daughter E asked me to come listen to the music she composed. She wanted to see what my opinion was and wrote out her very own sheet music. I glanced at the sheet music and she had written a bunch of letters on a piece of paper that corresponded to the keys of the piano.

I didn’t know what to expect and asked her how she came up with the music. She said she just wrote down the letters that came to her mind. I said that’s great and that I wanted to hear what it sounded like. E ended up playing some of the music and it sounded funny. I asked her if she played the keys to see how it sounded before writing them down and she said no - she just wrote the music!

I ended up listening to her play the piano for a few more moments before she ran off to do something else. Even though she didn’t play a composed song, the fact that she got some exposure to writing her own music made the purchase worth it to me. I’m not sure if she will end up being a musician, but I do hope it helps open something up for her creatively as she plays with the piano.