Unwrapping of a Gift

Since Kiera was a year old, it was obvious to me that she has the gift of music.  She could sing songs on key at that age and has always sung extremely well and picked up songs after only hearing them once or twice.  For about the past 5 months, since Kiera turned 4, she has been playing songs on the piano.  It started with me teaching her a few songs, but it quickly progressed into her playing songs by ear and figuring them out on the piano by herself!  Here’s a list of some of the songs she can play (I can’t remember all of them):

-Are You Sleeping Brother John

-Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

-Three Blind Mice

-London Bridge

-Jack and Jill

-A Thankful Heart from Veggie Tales

-Somewhere Beyond the Barn from Veggie Tales

-Veggie Tales theme song

-Blue’s Clues theme song

-Wonder Pets theme song

-Backyardigans theme song

-Silent Night

-Joy to the World

-Angels We Have Heard on High

-Jingle Bells

-Mighty to Save

-God is So Good

-My God is So Big

-the first line of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

-the first 2 bars of Fur Elise

Not only can she play most of them in the key of C (the easiest key), but a bunch of them she has also figured out in other keys or their original key that she has heard them in.  She can also play in the key of G, D, E, B, A and F#!  She sometimes says to me, “Look Mom!  I’m playing it on the black keys (plays the song)…now I’m playing it on the white keys (and switches keys).”  I am totally in awe of God that He has given her this gift and started to develop it at such a young age!  I started playing piano at age 7 and didn’t start playing by ear until I was about 13 or 14.  The fact that she’s playing by ear a whole decade sooner than that is totally incredible!  One of the best parts is that she doesn’t know it’s not “normal” for a 4-year-old to sit down at the piano and start playing songs in multiple keys, whether it has 2 sharps or 7 sharps.  She doesn’t know that is supposed to be difficult because for her it’s not!  Every time she gets stuck trying to figure out a song and she says, “I can’t do this” (which isn’t very often), I simply tell her, “Yes, you can,” and she tries again and 99% of the time figures it out without my help.  I want to take a video of her playing some of them and then put it on my blog if I can.  With my new camera, the files are different, so I have to figure that out.  Glory to God, because it’s all His grace and His goodness!