He Taught His Teacher

I've always preferred to use time values such as Ta and Ta-Ah for teaching little ones instead of calling them by their proper names (Crotchet and Minim, respectively). The reason being "real" names are difficult words for the kids to learn, or so I thought.

Last month as I flipped the page of the Piano Party book with one of my 4-year-olds, I saw that we had come to that part of the book where it was time to introduce Notes and their Time Names. I immediately thought to myself, if a 7-year-old has problems with it, surely a 4-year-old will too. So I decided there and then that I would introduce the names of the notes, but more importantly, teach the little 'un how long each note should be held. That, I thought, would be the goal of the lesson. And if he (and the other little 'uns whom I teach) can't quite remember these difficult words, then so be it. They'll have lots of time later on as they grow older to learn them.

So I quickly told him that the black, coloured note with the stem (that's the vertical line on those musical tau-gays, for those of you who don't read music) was called a Crotchet and when we see it we clap 'Ta'. The white, uncoloured one with the stem is a Minim and we clap then bounce our clasped hands once and say 'Ta-Ah' (clapping on the 'Ta' and bouncing on the 'Ah', you see). I finished up with the Semibreve and then thought we should play a little game. We did, and he performed splendidly. When I pointed to the various notes, he'd clap and say the appropriate 'Ta's and 'Ah's.

Then I packed him off home feeling pleased with myself.

A week later, to recap the previous week's lesson, I decided instead of reminding him what anything was, I'd  first let him show me how much he could remember. So I pointed to dear old black, coloured note and said "Do you remember what this is?"  Imagine my surprise when instead of saying 'Ta', he said "Crotchet". And continued to give me the Time Names of all the notes on the page. Correctly.

This incident reminds me of something I always knew, but sometimes fail to remember. When you're a child, every word is new. As we grow we learn more and more new words. It doesn't matter if those words are specific to a particular subject, if they're technical jargon, if they're in another language. They're all equally new. A 4-year-old is no better suited to learning one word over another if he didn't know either of them before that point.

And so all this while, I've been assuming that Time Names are difficult to learn, because they're not words we hear and/or use all the time with people in general. A 10-year-old might find them strange words to learn because they've already amassed such a large number of words in their vocabulary. But when the child is as young as 4 or 5, it ain't so strange. Every other word they come across is going to be new. So why not just teach them the proper Time Names?

Why not indeed. Every single little 'un that I've taught these words to since that first incident has managed to remember them. And quite easily I might add. I'm glad I learnt this lesson tho. Or at least that I was reminded of it. I wonder what other adult-acquired assumptions I've imposed on those I teach...