Thanks to Tamsyn for sharing this!
Babies and Music? Some wonderful suggestions. Part 2.
Babies and Music? Some wonderful suggestions. Part 3.

Speaking of music, I have to really recommend the Kodaly method. I actually got my degree in music and have had a lot of experience with children, and have been really impressed with it. It starts out for toddlers using authentic singing games and nursery songs. It teaches music reading through solfeggio (Do Re Mi, etc) before pitch names so the children can sight-sing music. It teaches in the sequence that is easiest for children to sing, beginning with Sol and Mi, gradually adding notes until they know the whole scale. They also teach rhythm using french rhythm solfege, which I have found to be particularly effective with my piano students. If anyone is intrested, I highly recommend the book “The Kodaly Method” by Lois Choksy. It is full of great ideas for teaching music to children, including several songs great for teaching in the back. I use a lot of Kodaly in my studio.

On teaching piano to young children, I wish to give my take on that too. Ideally toddlers would have a 5-15 minute lesson every day to fit their attention span, and I think this is the best time to start. I’ve been teaching piano for 10+ years now, but have been wondering how I’ll teach my little boy. In my research, I found this website:

Piano For Preschoolers

I really liked the idea of color-coding for little kids, but this wasn’t very practacle for my studio, so I made my own color code chart to slip behind the keys on our piano. An octave is 6 1/2″ on the piano, so I made a table in microsoft word with 7 columns and 7 rows, and made it 6 1/2″ wide. I put the letters CDEFGAB in it and printed it out on cardstock. Then I colored all the C’s pink, the D’s yellow, E blue, F orange, G green, A purple, and B brown. I made this order up because it gave the best contrast, in my opinion. Putting red and orange next to each other gives more room for confusion. I cut these out and used clear boxing tape to laminate it and make one long strip to put behind they keys. You can also laminate them after you color, and then just use scotch tape to connect them, which was easier for me because I have a laminator. My youngest piano students are 6 and 7, and they were very excited when I gave them one.
Then I had my students color the notes in their songs. This has been very helpful for a couple of my students who had become too dependant on finger numbers. One student told me it made her music pretty. ) For a toddler, I would color the notes for them.
Most piano teachers have a favorite method, and mine is the John Thompson course. It is a more classical approach then the newer methods, and I find my students progress with it more quickly. Although the music is still the same, they have updated their “teaching little fingers to play” book so that it’s not such small print, and they have fun colored images for each song. It also has a lot of tips for the teacher. The method has been around long enough I have found this book at thrift stores, but it’s only about $7 new. When I start my little boy on piano, I’m going to use this method and use a color-code chart to make it easier for him. Good luck!

P.S., I liked this link too: Baby, Toddler Musical skills

For more suggestions from Tamsyn, see:
Babies and Music? Some wonderful suggestions. Part 2.
Babies and Music? Some wonderful suggestions. Part 3.