One Step at a Time

During the last few weeks, I introduced the open strings G and C to my youngest ukulele students - the first graders. If you read my previous post, you’ll know that we spent a month and a half solidifying their understanding of the open strings using the numbers 1-2-3-4, and working on their ability to pluck a steady beat while singing.

Following this slow, step by step process, it proved to be very beneficial.

As I introduced low G and C on the treble staff, they were immediately able to connect them to strings 4 and 3 without hesitation. Plus, right away they knew which note was lower or higher, as they already had the muscle memory in place to read the notes on the staff and play without looking down at their fingers. How awesome is that!? We were able to focus much of the instruction time on the physical look and placement of these two notes on the treble staff, and solidify their understanding of a line note vs. space note, and on the staff vs. below the staff. This allowed us to focus on reading and playing the songs. I taught them the first few songs from the book (“Great Grandpa George,” “Cece Cat” and “George and Cece”) and they breezed through them.

When we added a simple down strum of the C6 chord, it was a piece of cake since we had already practiced plucking a steady beat while singing prior to reading on the staff. This one step at a time approach was lengthy (and I had to get creative with making I-V accompaniments to songs they already knew) but it was definitely worth it when I saw how easy it was to jump to reading on the staff and playing while singing.