Beginner student having trouble playing chord with only 3 fingers Options

[Haruyuki]

Hello all.

I'm new to teaching the piano (mid-career switch) and have had one student for a year now. She just turned 7 last December and was almost completely new to the concept of music when I started teaching her. I'm actually having some serious issues teaching her, but I'd expound on that in another thread when I get certain things sorted out.

A couple of days back, I was going through A Dozen A Day (Mini) with her when we came across our first triad (C E G). She tried it a few times but was unable to play it without her 4th finger going down as well.

Why does that actually happen? Small hands/weak fingers?

What should I do to correct it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

[dolce@piano]

I think that this is very common too, especially with a young child.

There's no magic cure.

I have one 6 year-old who's progressing very well (two hands, quavers, small chords) but can't play tonic triads without his 4th finger going down.
I don't want him to force them either and make his hand like a claw in order to do it.

So I'm just ignoring the third note and he's playing a fifth in the couple of pieces that have them (which means his hand is in a good position and the sound is about right).

We're doing quite a lot of finger and chord exercises and I'm quite sure that it'll happen naturally quite soon.