The Music Tree Activities Book: Part 1

Edit: Amazon insists on posting my review for The Music Tree Book 1 Activities in both the listings for Music Tree 1 Activities as well as Music Tree 2a Activities. I am not alone. You will see other inaccurate repeats. I have repeatedly asked for assistance from Amazon customer support but they continually choose not to help, so I am modifying my reviews to include both. I will edit again if this ever gets fixed.Here is my review for Music Tree 2a Activities:I’m a big fan of Frances Clark and The Music Tree series as well as other books in her library, but I might be the most critical of this book. Here’s why:1. Page 6 of the Activities book is exactly the same as page 6 in the lesson book, only without the playing. Why do this whole exercise twice?2. In the lesson book, students are told to use a dash to represent the half beat when writing out the counting for quarter and eighth notes. In the activity book, the students are told to use dashes to represent the pulses instead of counting numbers. Consistency is so important and there’s none here.3. As I said in my review of the previous Part 1 Activities book, the walking around the room (book in hand) to “walk the rhythm” is just a waste of time. I’m fine with tapping and clapping and counting out rhythms but asking the student to leave the piano is a bad idea – especially when the piano is located in their playroom with all of the other distractions.4. The word chain and bubble puzzles are annoying. No one likes them.5. The two pages of exercises outlining 5-finger patterns are poor, in that it’s up to the student to guess whether a key has flats or sharps. Key signatures aren’t taught until the next book.6. There is a lot less written work to do. A lot of the book is counting exercises, which is great but not something they really do on their own. I choose to do these together as clapping and counting duets during the lesson.7. Really? More matching? At this point, they aren’t little children anymore. Please, no more matching! Just like previous books, I have them write the answers next to the questions to encourage proper spelling and drawing of symbols.8. Matching PLUS a crossword puzzle for the same words? COME ON. That’s just busy work.What I DO like about this book:1. There is a TON of sight playing/sight reading. I even use the note and interval naming exercises as sight reading exercises before I assign them as they are.2. Transposing! Yay!3. The copying exercises, where the student is asked to transcribe several measures in a different octave. This is about the only time they are asked to write consecutive notes, so I treasure these. They are a good building block for when I hand them blank staff paper and tell them it’s time to compose and document.How I would improve this situation (besides fixing items one through eight above): Create a separate sight-playing supplement and make Part 2a the beginning of having three books rather than two. Add content to the Activities book so it is more of a theory/written exercise book. Copying from one octave to another is great. We spent so much time talking about transposing though, and spent no time documenting transposition in the book – so let’s add some of that. That’s something you actually have to do in real life! You could also include a few pages of blank staff paper to make my life easier.And here is my review for The Music Tree Book 1 Activities:I am a firm believer in the Frances Clark method and this Activity book is the absolute best in The Music Tree series. The units and pages line up with the corresponding units in the Part 1 Lesson Book, and both books happen to have 62 pages, making things a little more balanced than how uneven the Time To Begin books are. Spot placing (finding the note name based on landmarks) is introduced. There are many different exercises including keyboard dictation, which every single student of mine loves doing – so much so that when we finish the first dictation exercise, they will immediately thumb through the book to see how many more times they get to do it (then again, my hyping it up probably helps). There are plenty of sight playing / sight reading pages that can (and should) be played with either hand, stressing concepts that have been previously taught.The “rhythm puzzle” on page 51 is confusing to most, so I do the entire first line (of five) with them so they understand what to do, but my bigger complaint is that this exercise should be at the beginning of the book rather than the end as the answer outlines HOW TO SIGHT PLAY and by this point they have already sight-played 8 pages of exercises - a total of 40. And that’s just what’s in this book; obviously there is sight reading going on with every lesson and introduction of new music. Doesn’t make much sense. It’s a good puzzle otherwise.Pages 52 and 53 are baffling to every single student and they can’t seem to ever complete these pages on their own. I’ve worked through them in their entirety with some of my students, but I often find we are better off if I just do my own thing and skip these pages. I also skip the walking the rhythm stuff because I don’t think my students end up gaining anything from it and it just wastes valuable time.As I said in my review of the Time To Begin (Primer level) Activities book, PLEASE, enough of the matching! Too annoying to check, and the kids would be much better off writing out the answers to reinforce the spelling of the words or the drawing of the symbols correctly, so that’s what I make them do instead. Also, when do kids learn how to do crossword puzzles in school or in life? I’ve found that I’m always the one to teach them what a crossword puzzle is and how to do one. The content, however, is perfect. I just wish it was presented in a different fashion. As I said before, cutesy isn’t always the solution. Kids like being treated like adults.Even with those minor complaints, I still think this is the best activity (theory) book in the series. The repetition here is appropriate and far from obvious. The exercises do a great job of applying what the students have learned in the lesson book.Just a quick positive note about the publishing company: A few years ago I spotted a typo (more like an ink blob) in the printing of this book, making it impossible for students to answer the final question on one of the puzzles. I reported it to the publisher. They fixed it immediately it seemed, because I had to reorder and the new batch I received no longer had the printing error.

Supplementing my teaching materials really well. This book is colorful and fun to learn. Will keep using and purchasing this book for my future students.

Fantastic for beginners

My son has already completed this book and the matching activities book. This is a good foundation book with great music collections.

Our piano teacher recommended these books. We're using it in conjunction with private lessons and my daughter is quickly accelerating!

I find that this series makes better music readers. Other books use finger positions and finger numbers as a crutch, This series uses "landmarks" on the keyboard and the staff followed by intervals. It fosters much better musicianship than any other series.

I like the in-depth explanation in the book which can be used by children to adults.

I play piano and was going to teach my daughters too but it was just not working. So I got this book and ultimately broke down and got a student to teach them. She uses the book and activities weekly. She likes it and my daughter is learning to play so must be good!

I have been teaching piano for 25 years , there is no better method!