KinderBach is a fun, online beginner piano music curriculum that is geared towards young children, aged between 3 and 7. It teaches patterns, rhythms, musical notations, singing, listening skills and basic music knowledge.
Miss Karri (the founder) uses fun characters like Dodi the Donkey, Frisco (the little boy) and the beat bugs to make the short informative videos engaging. These characters really caught the attention of our 7 year old and kept the learning fun and engaging. New information is added slowly, so it is easy for young children to understand.
At the moment there are six levels of music lessons. Each level consists of 10 weeks of music lessons which is again broken down into 4 lessons per week. Each of these 4 lessons runs for approximately 5 minutes.
To complete these lessons you will need:
- a computer or laptop
- a keyboard
- a fast internet connection
- crayons, pencils, glue and scissors
- rhythm instruments
- printer – to print out the activities to go with the lessons
The Teacher Corner
The Teacher Corner enables you to access lesson plans, stories, colouring books, teacher aids, audio mp3’s and more for all of the levels of KinderBach. This area is really good for those that are planning to use Kinderbach with a group of children. There are so many extra activities here!
Our boys really enjoyed reading the Train Station Book and using the Everyday Songs book to play tunes on the piano. The colouring books are a great fun way to reinforce some of what your child has been learning. You can also download the copy of the student book for each level here as well.
How did we go?
The first thing I did was print off a book for each of the boys and bound them. These books are situated under the lessons when you sign in. Then we started off at Level 1, Week 1, Lesson 1.
At the start of each week, there is a short introduction telling you what you will be learning and what you will need for the following lessons. We found this really helpful as we were able to gather all our supplies before we sat down and started.
Our boys didn’t just stop at one 4-5 minute lesson at each sitting. They found it better to do the four weekly ones at once. This may have to do with the fact that they are older and could understand the lessons. Younger children may want to do just one or two lessons per sitting.
This program has been great in teaching our boys about rhythm and a steady beat, something we have only touched on before. I have noticed that since using Kinderbach, they have been getting out their piano books more and playing more often and for longer periods of time. Their timing is improving greatly!
A few improvements that could be done are: the quality of the videos. When you enlarge the screen for the children to watch, it does become a little fuzzy, though it had no effect on the children’s learning. It is also hard for the children to watch the video and play the piano at the same time. We found using a laptop on the top of the piano was the best way to overcome this. There is also an app for the iPad and the iPhone, that may help with this, but I haven’t used these.
So what do you get?
What you get for your Year Online Membership Plus Teacher Corner, all for a special price of $95.88 (on sale at the moment) which equates to just $7.99 per month for the year:
access to over 240 sessions of lessons (six levels!) that are able to be used with a computer, iPad, Android Tablet, Kindle Fire or Nook- Downloadable PDF activity pages
- Access to the Teacher Corner materials – Pdf and audio MP3s for Levels 1 to 6 (over $400 worth of books which you can access straight away)
- Downloadable story books, colouring pages and song books
access to over 240 sessions of lessons (six levels!) that are able to be used with a computer, iPad, Android Tablet, Kindle Fire or NookNOTE: They do offer 2 weeks free access for you to trial the music lessons to see if the lessons are what you are looking for.
Even though our boys are in the upper end of the age for this program, they still had a fun time using it. It did go a little slow for them at times. I think it is more suited to children aged 7 and under and would be quite helpful in teaching them the basics of music knowledge.
During our time using the program so far, we have finished level 1 and most of level 2 and there has not been a lot of playing on the piano which our boys were really looking forward too. There has been lots of rhythm activities, colouring pages and high/low sounds.
As a parent it is a great program. You do not need to have a musical background, there is limited preparation and you don’t have to travel to music lessons! The cost of this program is really good too. Where else would you pay only $7.99 per month for piano lessons!
Let’s go over the details again.
Details At a Glance!!
Name: The KinderBach Online Piano Lesson Membership with Teacher Corner
Website: KinderBach.com
Product: Year Online Membership Plus Teacher Corner
Price: Usually $130 per year but at the moment it is $95.88 for the year, which equates to $7.99 per month!
Ages: This site is for children aged 3 to 7 years old
You can find KinderBach at:
Twitter (@KinderBach)
YouTube: KinderBach Preschool Piano
To read more reviews from the Schoolhouse Review Crew, please click HERE!
Monday Memory Verse Exodus 20:12