Congrats to Jo-Jo on Completing Piano Safari Book One!

This week was a big one for Jo-Jo – he completed his LAST piece in the first Piano Safari book! Jo-Jo has been working on this book as part of the Preschool Piano Academy curriculum for a little over a year, and had to learn and perfect almost 80 pieces to complete it! Check out Jo-Jo’s happy moment:

We love the Piano Safari books for so many reasons! Here are some of our favorite features:

• Students learn both by rote (by ear/example) and by reading, so they develop both skills simultaneously.
• Because of those rote pieces, students are able to play music much harder than what they can read, which keeps them excited about piano.
• Piano Safari includes both improvisation and composition exercises to help students become well-rounded musicians.
• “Animal technique” pieces teach isolated techniques that can then be combined into complex pieces. Each piece has a story and an animal to keep students engaged!

While we use the Animal Technique pieces with all of our beginner students, Piano Safari is especially great for preschool students because the pieces are short but fun. Almost every piece has a duet for the teacher to play along, too! (For more info on our preschool Piano Academy program, click here.)

In the solo room, Jo-Jo will now move on to learning more difficult pieces using the skills and concepts he learned in Piano Safari. He’s also planning to play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in the Piano Academy next week. With a solid foundation, he’s on his way to great things at the piano!