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Frequently Asked Questions
Busy parents wanna know…
For quick wins that are low pressure for you and your kids, open up Prodigies and work though our quick start playlists or our long play videos. This can take as little as 4 minutes for a video or as long as 40 minutes.
If you’re ready for step-by-step lesson plans, check out Prodigies Music Level 1A, grab the corresponding workbook PDF (or textbook from our shop) and use the 45 minute weekly lesson plans provided.
Using the weekly lesson plans, you’ll be able to stay consistent with music practice each week. This can be something to look forward to every week, and will make working through Prodigies a successful routine for you and your young musicians.
For quick streaming and all video lessons, you can easily stream through our app Prodigies on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku4k, and fireTV.
Our web platform at Prodigies.com contains all the same videos, plus additional features like sheet music, printable resources and curriculum activities.
You don’t NEED an instrument to start. There are instrument free lessons to begin, instrument free playlists and there’s even a digital instrument on our website.
That said, having an instrument will help your child’s skills and engagement significantly. This can be Chromanotes Deskbells (or Prodigies Deskbells when they’re in stock), any piano with color-coded stickers, or any kind of xylophone or C Major instrument.
There are also lessons specific to ukulele and recorder, and naturally you’ll want those instruments for these technique heavy courses.
Then you’re about to have a lot of fun learning music!
No, but seriously… it’s easy, it’s fun and you can TOTALLY facilitate this program with your kids. We start out with easy echo songs about numbers, colors and solfege (do re mi) which make it super easy for anyone to follow.
Prodigies focuses on the fundamentals around pitch and rhythm using iconic notation, which means it won’t require you to read music. We focus largely on the notes and the chords — stuff most 7-12 year olds learn in piano lessons — we just do it with colors and hand-signs and bells that make it easier for younger age groups.
The videos and listening activities are fun and effective for kids throughout early childhood.
At 1 year old, they’ll start tapping a steady beat and singing “Do” and “Hello C.”
By age 3, they’ll be hand-signing with Solfege and ready for the activities and worksheets.
By age 5, they’ll be recalling notes, playing melodies, practicing chords and crushing aural comprehension games.
By age 7, they’ll be playing more complex melodies, performing on their instrument and singing tunefully with confidence.
While every child’s musical journey is different, there is a wealth of evidence that shows that pitch exposure and a music education before age 6 can do some incredible things for the brain (like unlocking the skills associated with perfect pitch).
That’s why we encourage folks to start early, take breaks if you need to, and keep revisiting music lessons throughout your child’s development. Our own kids have gone through phases with the program and that’s 100% okay!
Think of Prodigies like Netflix for educational music lessons. There are some programs that everyone will enjoy, some programs specifically for infants and toddlers and then some more advanced material as well.
Our platform currently only supports 1 profile per account, so while you can see your progress and where you left off (and even favorite videos and games), there isn’t a way to track multiple kids in one account.
To help with tracking individual progress, we have printable checklists & calendars that you can use for each kid to track their musical journey.
A lot of our core lessons focus on hand-signing with Solfege and then performing that melody on bells or xylophone. Siblings can alternate playing a single instrument with doing the hand-signs, or they can split up the bells to work together. There are performance tracks with multiple parts and instruments so you can easily make your own ensemble.
Music Educators Ask…
Level 1 of our General Music curriculum is almost entirely in C Major (where Fixed Do and Movable Do are the same). So that’s nice!!
In Level 2, we have both Fixed and Movable Do variations of the core curriculum and performance tracks. While we believe in the teachability of absolute pitch through Fixed Do, we also understand that Movable Do is more widely adopted by classroom teachers and music educators for a variety of reasons.
From our experience, children who grow up with Prodigies prefer to stay in the Fixed Do system, where kids who are just coming into music during elementary school are better served by Movable Do.
Furthermore, as the program progresses into Level 2, we lean into singing about the scale degrees more and more to help distinguish between Movable and Fixed concepts.
The earlier elements of our curriculum around patterns, numbers, letters, phonics and music are largely inspired by Head Start Standards and guidelines set forth by NAEYC.
The elementary level curriculum inside Prodigies is more aligned with NAfME Music Standards and guidelines.
While Prodigies Lifetime gives teachers TONS of material to tackle the standards, Prodigies Academy is our true standards-aligned digital curriculum for K-5. There you can filter, search and sort by state standards, and even make your own lessons to fill any gaps specific to your program.
If you have mallet instruments, percussion, recorders, ukuleles, Boomwhackers, or any combination of those, you’re going to LOVVVVVEEEE working with Prodigies.
You can jump into the lessons or songs featuring those instruments, or pull up performance tracks that feature multiple instruments to get your ensemble playing together.
By having your kids follow our colorful and fun-to-play sheet music style, you’ll have more freedom to save your voice and float around the room assisting and assessing students one on one.
Um yeaa!!!
We work closely with Rhythm Band Instruments and Chromanotes and we do our best to match the colors we use to the colors they use.
If you find KidsPlay colored instruments (which feature a blue instead of a teal for the note G), these are NOT the same colors. That said, they’re reasonably close and we’ve seen a lot of families and classrooms adjust to make it work.
The colorful and upbeat nature of Mr. Rob & Prodigies often leaves older kids and elementary school teachers wondering… “is this legit enough for 4th & 5th graders.”
And the answer is YES!! Inside the general music curriculum, we have lessons and curriculum covering Mi Sol La, C Major songs, Intervals in C Major, Chords in multiple keys, melodies from Gershwin, Beethoven & more.
Prodigies Lifetime unlocks our streaming video curriculum and PDF library, as well as a few bonus games and resources.
This does NOT include student accounts, Google Classroom integration, or digital interactions more typical of an LMS.
These additional hybrid learning features ARE available from our sister company, Prodigies Academy.
If you’re a K-5 music educator who enjoys Prodigies Lifetime, we would be happy to give you 30 Days Free to Prodigies Academy and we’ll even apply whatever money you spend on Prodigies Lifetime to your school’s first year of Academy access.