In this episode, John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) explore early childhood music education and why starting younger than most studios allow can actually set kids up for long-term musical success.
Many private lesson studios set firm age requirements based on assumptions about readiness, like can the child read, or will they practice? John and Mandy challenge those assumptions, making the case that play-based, organic learning in the early years primes students for deeper engagement down the road, builds lifelong musical instincts, and creates the kind of retention that transforms a studio’s long-term health.
In this episode:
- Why common age requirements in private studios are often based on the wrong definition of readiness.
- How early childhood music education supports development before formal reading or practice expectations are appropriate.
- Why a play-based approach sets a healthier precedent for how students relate to music long-term.
- The role parents play in early childhood music programs and how to engage them effectively.
- How transitioning students from group early childhood classes into private lessons creates exceptional long-term retention.
- Mandy shares how she structures enjoyable, low-pressure programs that prime children for future musical growth.
If your studio has a minimum age requirement, this conversation will challenge some of the assumptions behind it and give you a practical case for rethinking when music education should begin.
————————————————–
Your ratings and reviews on Apple Podcast and Spotify are always appreciated!
Join our private Facebook group, “The Modern Music School,” a community for like-minded professionals to connect and share insights.
Looking for a simple and effective guitar curriculum that includes FREE instructor training and support? Consider John’s book, Complete Guitar Strumming.
Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.566)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki.
Mandy (00:06.081)
and I’m Mandi York.
John Kozicki (00:08.406)
Mandy, we are gonna talk about your favorite subject today. One of my favorite subjects, like early childhood music. And kind of get into the nuance of why some of these very early childhood programs can be very beneficial in a studio. And then also as you like to call it lesson readiness. Like at what…
Mandy (00:16.099)
Yes.
John Kozicki (00:34.936)
point and what age or maybe developmental stage. Is it a good idea to start talking about or steer toward maybe more traditional private lessons or that sort of setting? It’s complex because as we’ve talked about in the past and what we were just talking about before we pressed record here, there’s a lot of
nuance involved with how parents feel about this too.
Mandy (01:08.596)
Absolutely. Yep. And like we’ve talked about before, parents are one of our number one students. We need to, we need to educate them, right? And so they can make the best decisions for their kids.
John Kozicki (01:10.198)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (01:14.666)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Right, so to fill in some gaps for any listeners who might be new or not totally familiar with your background, you run an early childhood music center. Yeah, and Music Together is your curriculum, so you start kids at six, is it six months?
Mandy (01:47.63)
We start them whenever they’re ready to come in. I’ve had them, yeah, as early as three months, but like siblings, I think my record is three days for a sibling to attend. Yes. Yeah. Yep.
John Kozicki (01:50.976)
Okay.
John Kozicki (01:57.912)
my, okay. That is really new. And it’s caregiver and child classes to clarify. Yeah.
Mandy (02:10.84)
Correct. The whole family. Yep.
John Kozicki (02:14.328)
Now I know why you decided to do this, but for listeners, you were a student of one of these classes, not as a baby, but as a parent to a child, yeah. So I guess when did it click in your mind where you decided, hmm, there’s something here?
Mandy (02:25.516)
Yes, I was. Yeah, as a parent.
Mandy (02:39.766)
Yeah. And it really was kind of like a light switch or light bulb moment. Like you said, a click. I, before we moved to this community, I had both of my girls, on the other side of the state. And during my maternity leave, well, my husband and I are both musicians. Okay. And during my maternity leave, I had the opportunity to like, do some stuff with the kids. wasn’t in the office all day.
John Kozicki (02:59.071)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (03:08.29)
So I signed up for these early childhood music classes. My second daughter was just, you know, newborn in the little bucket seat and my older daughter was two years old. So my younger would just sleep in her, in her car seat, stroller, and I would participate in class with my older one. Now towards the end, you know, this is weeks long course towards the end of that course, my younger one was also kind of sitting on my lap and observing too. But, I, I signed up because
John Kozicki (03:16.792)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (03:33.207)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (03:38.144)
Music, right? We love it. We do it. We make it at home. So it was just kind of a no brainer. Of course we’re going to go do this. But then like, really, I think it was just one class. I kind of had this palm to forehead moment. Like, my gosh, this is so smart. I like I’ve said before, you know, my, my background is in performance. didn’t study music education. But
John Kozicki (03:40.696)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (03:56.076)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (04:05.738)
having my own little guinea pig in class and seeing what was being absorbed and what was coming home with us, how she was, the musical behaviors that were coming out at home. I, I was really like astonished and I thought it was so cool. So when we moved here to this community, there wasn’t a music together center nearby. and I ended up opening my own. That’s how it goes. And that’s when you and I met when I opened.
John Kozicki (04:12.619)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (04:32.609)
So yeah, exactly. Now I can say for myself, when I opened my first studio…
I didn’t really think about, okay, so what age do we start kids in music lessons? Because I didn’t have a early childhood program available at my first school. And honestly, I think maybe I thought about it for a second, but I wasn’t thinking about it necessarily in terms of is this…
necessarily beneficial to students and what are those benefits, which I think there are tons and I think you’re going to talk about. I was more thinking about it from the business perspective. Is there a way to serve a younger age group? But as I’ve gotten to know you and listen to you talk about early childhood programs and I.
I took your classes with my son too. I see way more benefits now. So what do you kind of view as the big benefits to these early childhood programs and putting a kid in a music class at say three days old?
Mandy (05:43.478)
Yeah.
Mandy (06:01.238)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, gosh, it’s, it’s really big. You know, the more that I’ve learned and done this and experienced, you know, teaching, there’s so much to it. Things, things that I hear from, from families and caregivers, like when they’re looking for, for an activity or they’re calling me because they’re interested and they want to learn more, they’ll say things like, my kid just
My baby, my toddler, they just love music. I hear that all the time. My baby loves music. Like they’re surprised too, you know, every baby loves, all people do. or they say things like they want to socialize their child or we just, we want to get out of the house. stuff like that. I also get, families that will call in and say that they, music classes were recommended by like a, a speech therapist.
John Kozicki (06:32.982)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (06:39.382)
Right.
Mandy (06:59.074)
because music learning can help with speech development too. So those are a lot of the reasons I hear. we know that like in music learning, music making, when we make music with our whole body, like singing and moving our body to a beat, the brain lights up like almost no other activity. And I say that for making music. Listening to music is…
John Kozicki (06:59.105)
Mm-hmm, okay.
John Kozicki (07:22.263)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (07:29.004)
It lights up the brain as well, but in a different way than when you are creating music. so, making music with your kids helps with all these things like speech development, social, emotional skills. We’re working on all kinds of motor skills in class. executive function is a really big one that kids in this age group are, are learning and working on, on a daily basis. so.
John Kozicki (07:49.803)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (07:55.574)
Yeah.
Mandy (07:58.498)
The list goes on and on. The one thing I like to tell parents is that music learning supports all other learning. And that is a music together thing, I should say. That’s something that they like to say all the time. Music learning supports all learning. that’s what I try to talk to my parents about and give them specific parent education pieces about how that works.
John Kozicki (08:11.404)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (08:26.164)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (08:26.86)
I also like to say to them, like, you know, I’m a musician and I love music for music’s sake. So, you know, there’s also that, like, we do this because we love it. And then isn’t it great to know that, like, all these really awesome things are happening in the brain when we make music.
John Kozicki (08:41.941)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (08:48.903)
One thing that you told me, and I’m going to probably screw this up, so correct me. And I think we even may have talked about this on a previous episode, we were talking about the, I guess, like when someone starts to take music lessons, depending on the age, there’s like, there’s a lot of things to learn before reading music.
Mandy (08:53.102)
Yeah.
Mandy (09:19.118)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (09:20.255)
and you still have to learn them once you start. So say you are 10 years old and you’re starting, well, you’re still starting to learn about like rhythms and tones and things like that. There’s a lot that happens before then. So I think the case for an early childhood class where you do learn those kind of prepares kids.
even in advance for lessons.
Mandy (09:50.734)
Yes. Yeah. And in early childhood, which we’ll define as birth through eight years, actually, I think sometimes we think of early childhood as maybe just up until five, but it is defined as up to eight years old. We’re learning through play. We’re playing. That is how we learn. And play is enjoyable. It’s freely chosen. There are no like really
John Kozicki (10:01.067)
Okay.
John Kozicki (10:04.598)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (10:10.176)
Yeah.
Mandy (10:20.558)
strict rules around it, right? So what that looks like in an early childhood class in my classes is, you know, playing with shakers maybe. And I’m facilitating the group. The grownups have to participate because their children are drawn to their parents’ voices and the parents are the best teachers for them, not me, right?
John Kozicki (10:38.155)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (10:48.706)
So they’re always looking to their caregivers to learn and absorb from. But so I might lead us like shaking some eggs, but a baby may be sitting there gnawing on the egg in its mouth, right? Or another toddler might be tapping the eggs together. They are, they’re playing all of this is very freely chosen, but they’re immersed in like our sound and our visual.
John Kozicki (11:02.411)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (11:19.06)
and an auditory beat that we’re giving them. And throughout this process, the kids are developing, to get to your point of lesson readiness, they’re developing rhythmic and tonal competence. In my classes, we’ll play with tonal patterns or rhythm patterns. I’ll give them a ba, ba, ba, ba. We know like,
John Kozicki (11:22.027)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (11:35.788)
Yeah.
Mandy (11:47.18)
You know, a rhythm pattern has like four beats. We know the pieces and the language of music. I’m not telling them any of this. I’m just using it. And they repeat it back to me. When they get to five years old, they’re starting to babble back to me, like in a four beat pattern, right? They’re not saying, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. That doesn’t make sense. Yeah.
John Kozicki (11:49.879)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (11:57.591)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (12:08.965)
Right. you that’s yeah. It’s amazing, right? Because you never sat them down and said like, okay, every measure has four beats like you get in in private lessons where, you know, like, yes, an older kid can conceptualize that maybe, right?
Mandy (12:33.026)
Yeah. Yeah, depends. Right.
John Kozicki (12:35.22)
Because if you like, mean, take like a six year old and you’re like, all right, well, from this line here to this line here is called a measure. And within that measure, we get four beats. Like, does that make sense? Kind of like mathematically, maybe. But I think what you’re doing is, is you’re demonstrating. And as you said, you’re learning through play and you just sort of get it, you know, I,
Mandy (12:47.955)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (13:04.82)
I try and liken it to sports and you know, you can tell a five year old on a little league team who’s at the plate. Okay, if you hit the ball, you got to run to that plate over there. Right. But I’ve seen plenty of little league games where the kid runs to third base instead of first. Right. And it’s like, well, okay, yeah, you tell them, but like you show them and then they’re doing it and
Mandy (13:24.468)
the left. Yeah, Yes.
John Kozicki (13:34.486)
sort of locks it in. I don’t know, maybe I got tangential there.
Mandy (13:36.182)
Yes. Yep. is a really, it’s a really cool process to see that because we are just using it, just playing with it. and I mean, same thing with, with tonal patterns too. Well, I’ll have them repeat back like a major tonal pattern that I’ll go through. They can hear cadence. It’s really cool when I, when I come to the end of a song, you know, I’ve been maybe vamping and then I decide to slow down and
John Kozicki (14:02.794)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy (14:06.582)
and finish a piece, how many kids will kind of start to put their hands up to get ready for a drum roll? They hear cadence, you know, they know when the song is coming to a conclusion. so many good things happening in these kind of group classes that they will take with them into a private, you know, for example, piano, if they start a piano class, they’re, they’ll probably have a steadier thought, probably be able to keep a steady beat.
John Kozicki (14:13.876)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (14:21.846)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (14:35.214)
more than a beginner that hasn’t taken classes like this. They’ll hear, they may have a better ear and be able to, yeah, count.
John Kozicki (14:39.51)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (14:47.51)
I can say that in my studio, when we get a kid who came from your studio and was doing those early childhood classes, it always seems so much easier. They’ve already played with music for however many years.
Mandy (14:57.23)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (15:03.502)
because they just kind of have it inside.
Mandy (15:12.717)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (15:14.944)
We don’t necessarily have to explain to them.
like what pitch is, they’ve already, they already get pitch. As I was saying before, we don’t necessarily have to explain to them what it means that there are four beats in a measure. They already inherently know that there are four beats in a measure. We just might be able to then label it and say, those four beats, that’s called the measure. Instead of having to explain the whole thing.
Mandy (15:47.254)
Yeah, yeah. In my older kid classes, my rhythm kids that are kindergarten through second grade, it’s really, it’s a transition stage between the early childhood, zero to five class and private lessons or whatever may come next for kids. And I call it Big Kids Music Club because none of the grownups come to class. It’s just us. And I ask a little bit more of them. Like I said, early on, it’s
John Kozicki (16:09.846)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mandy (16:16.384)
It’s free play, right? Some of the kids follow along with us, but we’re providing the music immersion for the little ones in the bigger kids class. They’re following my lead. I give them the opportunity to improvise a little bit or to lead the group. But we, start naming these things. So in the early, early ages, we’ll play with dynamics a lot, but we just use it, right? We’ll play with tempo a lot, which is always so much fun.
John Kozicki (16:42.473)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (16:46.126)
for a two and three year old, right? When we get into this middle stage, which is my rhythm kids, we start naming them, you know, piano and forte, you know, are those kinds of things. So even that, this next little stage prepares those kids for what comes beyond that. And, you know, I want to talk about this too, is this
John Kozicki (16:48.117)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (16:55.19)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (17:15.586)
this middle ground. A lot of times as my kids start to age out of that early class that’s for zero to five along with a caregiver, they start to ask about private lessons. And as you said at the beginning, like not every kid is the same. And some kids are going to be ready sooner than others. And there’s a lot that goes into starting private lessons with a student. Physicality.
John Kozicki (17:17.334)
Hmm.
John Kozicki (17:28.192)
Yeah.
Mandy (17:44.258)
getting a good teacher match, all of that kind of stuff. But I really always strongly encourage my parents to keep their quote unquote big kids, K through third, in a group environment. And I refer them to you as well because you have the great Kids Rock program for the younger kids. Yes. I really think that that is a great next step because
John Kozicki (17:58.036)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (18:04.725)
Dave Simon’s program.
Mandy (18:12.866)
you’re continuing the community music making, right? Which keeps the kids engaged and excited. And they’re still honing in and like perfecting those skills that they started as, you know, toddlers and preschoolers.
John Kozicki (18:16.159)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
John Kozicki (18:31.731)
Yeah, I want to speak on that a couple of points because I don’t offer like, yes, we offer kids rock, which is we start at age four, right? But we don’t offer anything younger than that. And I, I certainly would if.
Mandy (18:34.252)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (18:51.933)
you know, if we weren’t friends and you weren’t in town at this point, I think like, yeah, probably would offer early childhood because I do see the benefit. But I’ll say this about that middle age group that you’re talking about and to put some numbers to it. I think you’re you’re saying roughly like what? Four to six ish. Is that kind of the middle or is it like a little bit older?
Mandy (18:54.893)
you
Mandy (19:20.52)
I would say like four to eight. Yeah.
John Kozicki (19:24.583)
Okay, before offering Kids Rock for four to seven year olds, we would try kids in private lessons because we didn’t have any other option. And I mean, I don’t have statistics on this, but success rate in those situations, very low in terms of longevity, right? Maybe successful for like
a couple of months, but then they sort of like fall off the cliff on that. And I have to believe it’s because private lessons are not necessarily play-based. They’re really a static environment. And when we started offering Kids Rock, it was kind of like the solution to that problem because it makes sense developmentally.
Right? And yes, that’s the program that we offer. I’m sure there are plenty of others, but I just see it as like a way better alternative to private lessons for that age group because there’s a greater success rate. Now, the other thing I think is a really huge benefit of these early childhood programs. Like what you’re doing, like what I’m doing.
is it’s kind of priming the pump for both parent and child expectations for the long term, right? Because I think oftentimes when we encounter young students, say like six or seven, and the thought process, well intentioned from the parents is like, they love music as you were saying, right?
Mandy (21:20.899)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (21:21.109)
My kid loves music. Shouldn’t they explore this a little bit more? Yes, they should. Shouldn’t they start learning about it? Yes, they should. And I think they’re just sort of ingrained in the idea of like, well, they go to school and in school they’re teaching them to read. So isn’t that what they’re gonna learn in music? They should learn how to read music. And it’s like, maybe, maybe not. at what…
Mandy (21:40.598)
Right.
John Kozicki (21:48.886)
stage of reading music, I think, is where it gets tricky and to unpackage this. going back to the idea of priming the pump, with these early childhood programs, there’s already a precedent set where playing with music is learning, right? It’s part of this longer process. It’s not just, okay, here’s your lesson book now. Now you’re in school, you know?
Mandy (22:16.266)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. The greatest thing. Yeah. The greatest thing, like you said, is when parents come back and they’ll tell me like he was singing like the ends of all the phrases this week, like his vocabulary is exploding. And so he’s singing like the last word of each phrase. Right. Or, you know, he got out the drum and started tapping his knees. You know, my 18 month old indicating they wanted to play music. So it’s like.
John Kozicki (22:18.875)
it’s, so important.
Mandy (22:47.09)
in the middle school band classroom and the private guitar lesson, the parents are on the outside and may not totally be keyed into what’s happening inside there. But when you have parents involved in early childhood music education and they see these things happening, you’re totally right. That is a good way to look at it. It’s priming the pump and they get excited about what’s gonna happen next.
John Kozicki (22:57.958)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (23:06.74)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (23:12.925)
And another thing, and I’ll put this in context, one of the challenges that we face at the Rock School is if, let’s say we’ve got a kid who’s like 10, right? Totally capable of starting private lessons, no question about it. They decide for all the same reasons. They seem to really love music. They seem to gravitate toward just guitar, as a for instance.
so I thought let’s get them into private music lessons and I say, yeah, great. Let’s do this. And then I start talking about our band program. You know, what do you think about this? Do you think they’d like that? Hmm. I don’t know. I think maybe building some confidence first would be a better approach. Let’s start with the private lessons and like, okay. Yeah. So we, we do that all the while trying to encourage.
taking what they’re learning in private lessons and applying it, interacting with other kids, playing music, it’s a much harder sell when kids start in private lessons than if they’re already used to this idea of, of course we make music with other people. know, of course we play and have fun with music. You know, it’s almost like there’s this mindset in the absence of that, that this is more of a
Mandy (24:31.466)
Yeah, right. Yeah.
John Kozicki (24:41.746)
like a studious pursuit, right? Something that you study. As opposed to the default being like, well, yeah, at some point there’s some study involved, but like it’s music. It’s to play with and have fun with. Yeah. And it’s weird. And I understand it, but it’s weird that I have to figure out ways to articulate that and how important that is.
Mandy (24:59.914)
Yeah, right.
Mandy (25:10.734)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, you know, relating it to sports. You don’t just swing a bat at the batting cages, you know, kids, kids want to be on a team and work together and play together. Yeah.
John Kozicki (25:20.114)
Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see on my notes here. Well, let’s we, we discussed this a little bit before, before we started recording the idea of lesson readiness.
So when you have in your studio, when you have these kids who are about to age out or getting to that point that they’re going to age out, what are those conversations like?
Mandy (26:00.49)
Yeah, well, it depends on the parent, right? I’ll have, yeah. I have parents that will approach me. I mean, I’ve had parents of two-year-olds approach me and say like, you know, they’re really loving music. Like, I can see that my child is a musical child, which like side note, we’re all musical people, like every single one of us is, you know?
John Kozicki (26:02.802)
Right? Yeah.
John Kozicki (26:24.402)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy (26:27.154)
music is an important part of the human experience. It’s, you know, it was nurtured more in some of us than others. That’s all. they’re going to be, you know, my child’s really musical. And so we want to start thinking about piano lessons. Do you know teachers in the area? anyone that will come to the home and they start asking me really specific questions. And I, I have to steer them towards like staying in the group environment. and then.
John Kozicki (26:34.739)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (26:54.376)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (26:56.578)
But if I do have parents of older students that start to ask, I will say, if I think that Susie is someone that’s ready and will want to pursue music in another capacity on her own, I always let them know. I recommend teachers. And then I say, it really has to be fun and enjoyable.
John Kozicki (27:11.432)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (27:25.296)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (27:26.072)
when you start off, it really does. Because, I mean, you can wither and die on the vine so early and then it’s over. Like that’s what kind of, that’s like my biggest fear, you know, is if a child has a bad experience and then that’s it. And I hear this from adults sometimes too, like in my classes, they’re like, I don’t know where my child gets it. I’m not musical at all. You know, my,
John Kozicki (27:36.988)
Right. Yeah.
John Kozicki (27:45.8)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (27:56.478)
my, I’ve had people say like my brother or my elementary music teacher or my high school band teacher all like criticized them. And then, and they stopped. Like there’s so many stories like that. And I hate those stories. Like, and the fact that like 30 year old adults can tell you about what an adult said to them when they were nine years old and they stopped making music. That’s huge. So.
John Kozicki (28:08.135)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
John Kozicki (28:22.467)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Mandy (28:27.64)
Don’t do that people don’t do don’t be one of those people. So that’s, that is when I really emphasize like this needs to be enjoyable, fun. I mean, it depends on your area. There are really wonderful, like group piano curriculum out there. There’s all kinds of fun. So, mean, things like what you’ve got going on where they’re able to play in a group band as well as in their private lesson. That’s what I say, look for,
John Kozicki (28:28.86)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (28:45.735)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (28:56.566)
And then you know, John, and you can speak to this about matching like personalities.
John Kozicki (29:01.169)
Yeah, well, yeah, before I talk about that, like you said, when you’re advising parents, make sure it’s fun. At this point, I wish we had a better way to describe what fun means, you know, because I just, feel like, I feel like that umbrella term of fun can be interpreted in so many different ways.
Mandy (29:05.421)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (29:17.422)
Mm, yeah, yeah.
John Kozicki (29:30.408)
by so many different people based on what their lens is. you know, for better or worse, I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of private instructors who are like, yeah, I make my lessons fun. And then other private instruct, yeah, and other, right, yeah, and other private instructors who like, are like, yeah, I make my private lessons fun and they’re not fun.
Mandy (29:48.77)
We have a sticker chart. Yeah.
John Kozicki (29:59.88)
You know, like maybe there’s those instructors who like legit. Yeah, this is amazing and some instructors are like, yeah, of course this is fun. It’s almost as if it’s a marketing thing, right? So and I don’t know what the answer is to that. Yeah.
Mandy (30:00.406)
Right. Yes. Yeah.
Mandy (30:08.109)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you’re right.
Can I try? So I think like when I’m talking to parents about this, needs to be something that kids are enjoying and they want to do.
with low pressure. mean, this comes back to like our conversations about practice. Like if you’re starting lessons at five or six years old, if you are like kind of getting on the kids every day about how much they need to practice and you know, you need to set the timer, your child is whining about it being too long. That’s not what fun is. That’s too much pressure.
John Kozicki (30:33.968)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
John Kozicki (30:57.337)
If it looks like a chore, it might be a chore.
Mandy (31:00.844)
Yeah. Yes. and I think like there are teachers that I recommend for younger students because of their, personalities, you know, that they have that would, I would consider more fun for young learners. I have said, I think this is part of what you’re getting at too, that, as they get older, like if they’re engaged and they’re
John Kozicki (31:12.583)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mandy (31:30.294)
Maybe it’s a low pressure situation. They’re having fun. They’re playing with music. and they’re getting into it. There’s going to come a time when you do have to push. I mean, that’s what I believe that, in order to get better, you’re going to have to push. Right. And so there’s a time for that to say, like, you know, look, you’re getting, your, teacher says you’re getting really close on this. Like, I, you know, whatever it may be.
practicing for a recital or the next program, there’s times to push to level up your child, but not early on.
John Kozicki (32:10.055)
I have a quote on this, just like I was listening to Jacob Collier on a podcast yesterday, and I even took it and put it in my notes. There’s a distinction between practice and play. Practice being when you organize a state of play to solve a particular problem. And then he goes on to say, I was somewhat resistant to liturgical practice. My approach to learning and practice was to follow the thing
Mandy (32:16.44)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (32:39.537)
that was interesting and felt like it lit me up. Isn’t that perfect? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I like, am a strong proponent of having these early childhood programs. Again, I think as I said, it primes the pump. It provides an opportunity for us to have like, I think from the business side, like so much more.
Mandy (32:43.64)
Yeah, that is, yeah, that’s it. Mm-hmm, yes.
John Kozicki (33:08.401)
longevity with these students. But again, going back to the those early days when I ran my first studio, that’s not what it’s all about. What I’m what I’m seeing now is when these early childhood programs are in place, we simply have a better time and an easier job with with our students as they get older. It’s it’s like we don’t have the same
Mandy (33:10.03)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (33:37.395)
push and pull with the parents and trying to figure out like how much they’re supposed to practice and like how are they supposed to approach this and are they learning to read at the right way. It just seems more organic and natural, I guess. So.
Mandy (33:51.138)
Yeah, yep. Yeah, that’s the point we’re trying to make with the parents when we have them in the classroom with us. Yeah, it’s awesome.
John Kozicki (33:59.039)
Mm Yeah. So huge proponent. Music Together is a great one. Obviously. You know, I’m obviously a fan of Dave Simon’s kids rock program we’ve developed at my school, even a like a beginner group curriculum for eight to roughly 11 year olds and very much found focused on the same fundamentals, which is
let’s get kids playing first and reading at an age appropriate level. And so that they are more ready for the private lessons when the private lessons come. Because, and with that program that I mentioned that we developed, we still were seeing kind of some of the same stuff when kids are say eight, nine years old. So we thought like, right, well, let’s expand this idea that we see in
and in these early childhood programs. And so that we can get these kids ready for private lessons in a way that’s more focused on play and interacting with music. So yeah, big fan.
Mandy (35:10.54)
Yeah, it’s so cool. I think it’s such a gift for the kids to have these experiences so early on. And I say to parents too, no matter what, if your kid wants to go on and teach music or play in an orchestra or be in a rock band or be a doctor, these experiences are all so wonderful for them. Yep.
John Kozicki (35:29.266)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (35:33.296)
Yeah. Well, Mandy, thank you for sharing your expertise because it’s always appreciated. And I think we’ll wrap this one up. All right. Okay. We’ll see you next time.
Mandy (35:38.081)
Yeah, thanks, John.
Mandy (35:43.63)
Sounds good. Yeah.
Sounds good. Thanks, John.
