Musical developments

Sierra loves to play the piano and whenever she gets up to the piano she is adamant that I put the footstool in place for her. I have a pedal extension footstool that I use for my younger students and if I place it for Sierra she can barely barely stretch down and actually press the pedals while she is playing. She loves this! She also must have a book on the music rack when she plays. She hasn't yet made a big distinction between music books and books with words, so sometimes I'll come in and discover a random story book up on the music rack, turned open to some special page.

Her experimentations on the piano are getting quite sophisticated, though. Just in the last couple of weeks she has abandoned using the palms of her hands on the keys and pretty much always uses one finger in each hand. Her most recent "tunes" involve one note with each hand--one hand stays on a static note, while the other hand moves up or down the keyboard. She has incredibly steady rhythm while she does this, and some of the stuff that comes out sounds quite cool. It's so fun to listen to her play!

From seeing myself and my students play, she has caught on to the whole "performance" thing and so when she is done with her piece, she gets down from the piano and says "Yay" and claps and bows. At first when she started bowing she would bow down so low that she would fall over backwards on her behind, but she has really gotten the hang of it now and she does quite an elegant bow. I'll have to have her teach some of my students how to bow properly.....

The pianos in our house are in a raised area and there are a few steps down to a sunken living room which create a bit of a "stage" effect for the pianos. I'm especially pleased that when she comes over towards the living room after a performance, she always backs up several feet from the top of the steps to take her bow, thus saving her mother many heart attacks!