I'm not sure if this is a St. Louis thing or not, but it was difficult to find a piano instructor for Sophia. Sophia showed an interest in taking piano lessons and yet every instructor we talked to said that they don't take any kids younger than 8 years old.

Fortunately we found someone who was highly recommended and was willing to start teaching her. Sophia is enthusiastic about getting lessons and has been taking lessons for about a month. As a former piano student myself, I was very curious what methods are used in teaching young kids. Her music book is interesting and I think it's a better technique than the one I grew up with which I can only describe as "traditional". In hers, it works by numbering the fingers, 2 is the index finger, 3 is the middle finger, 5 is the pinky etc.. Then the music is done by showing the hand positions on the piano and then there are numbers (of the corresponding fingers) next to notes. There is no visible music staff, but there is an implied one as each note position on the page is correctly proportioned above or below the preceding note.

In an effort to keep the enthusiasm high (and encourage practice time), I've offered to record her works so that she can share them with friends and family. The prospect of this appealed to her immensely. So I offer you 4 works played by Sophia and recorded by me.

The first one here is the first one we recorded and I think that the click count-in intimidated her a bit. All the songs are less than 30 seconds long.

Wind In The Trees 440k

Once she got the hang of recording, she quickly recorded these next 3 songs.

The I Like Song 440k
The Doorbell 580k
In The Jungle 256k