Working with My Cousin

In 2004 I created the first part of the teaching system and began working with Lorena on a weekly basis. When we first began the study sessions she was afraid of the texture of the piano keys and refused to touch them. We overcame this obstacle by having her place her hand over my hand and play the piano by pressing my fingers down on the keys. In only 4 sessions she overcame this fear and began playing the piano without my assistance.

When we began our study sessions she knew only 5-6 letters of the alphabet; however she was an excellent student and was willing to work on the program for up to 30 minutes at a time. I discovered that Lorena’s love of music was very understandable as she had excellent tone and pitch recognition. She was readily able to differentiate one note from another even when they were beside one another.

As the lessons progressed and the different piano notes became known to her as the letter Q or T or M she would spell a word and quickly recognize if she had made an error by the “sound” of the letter. In fact, she would identify an error first by its sound followed by the visualization of the letter.

Similarly in learning to spell a word, each had its own unique musical sound and configuration, and while two words may have had the same letters (i.e. ate and eat), because the piano notes were played in different sequence, no two words would sound the same. This similarly assisted her in learning how to spell and identify words.

Lorena quickly mastered the alphabet and in less than a year she had learned to spell the animal names in her book. As time progressed and her knowledge of the letters and words solidified, she was able to spell and read her learned words without reliance on the piano. She is currently working with Part 3 of the teaching system The Story of Little Bear.

Lorena and me during the first weeks of our study sessions together.