The Piano - From the Inside Out

Yesterday was the last day of my recent homeschool class and we ended with a "bang".  Naturally since I teach piano, I wanted to highlight it!  I arranged for my piano technician to come and talk to the kids and take the piano apart for them.

We even invited their parents to join us!  The first thing Amy did was to ask the kids what types of materials they thought were used to make a piano.
They came up with all kinds of suggestions - many of them quite accurate!

It's even amazing to me how many materials including how many different metals are used.  Amy even gave them a tactile approach. 

She showed them the differents felts, leathers, hammers, and working mechanics.  She even let showed them a pedal!

All of the pieces you see here were passed around for them to touch and see up close.  They loved this!

After these were all passed around, Amy pulled out a working model to show them how all of the pieces worked together.

This model enabled them to see everything up-close and watch the mechanics as a key was played.  A far different view from just looking inside the piano - especially if you have an upright!

From there, Amy proceeded to pull the action out of my piano.

Now THIS got their attention!  There were lots of "Wows" and loads of excitement.  They had been asking questions all along, but this invoked tons of questions!

This was a great way to end a 6-week long class!  Amy did a fabulous job and was great with the kids - very patient and exciting to listen to!

As a fun way to follow up on this, I had them watch a YouTube video where our friends, "Tom and Jerry" also showed us the inside of the piano.





VERY fun!  Lots of laughs.  This video would be fun at a group lesson where you talk about the piano - even if you don't have a technician do what Amy did.