I have some young students ( esp age 5 to 8 ) who played the piano with very flat fingers. Any tips for keeping those fingers curved?

Flat fingers usually means that the wrist has dropped and that there is too much tension. In the early days I usually focus a lot on the wrist positon - I tell them to imagine they are holding an orange in their hand and we do some finger patterns keeping that shape. We also try to balance a penny on the back of the hand and see how many notes can be played before it slides off - just a bit of fun but it reminds them of the hand shape.

I have used the 'penny' method too.
Seems a bit old fashioned but it does work if you make it like a game.

I have found that it is better not to worry too much about hand position at this very early stage, too much technicality causes more problems than enough with all beginners convinced that they already have enough to do. Hands correct themselves as pupils get better and the pupils don't feel that they have been consistently picked on for incorrect posture.

I tell pupils to imagine that there is a mouse under their hand - not an original idea (see Pauline Hall's "Tunes for Ten Fingers"). I squeak like a mouse when the hands go flat and the hand goes up again straight away. The pupils think this is hilarious and I have found this very effective. It works with adults as well as children - they just think you're a bit eccentric!

Have you tried getting them to sit on an inflatable ball? if you tense up while on a ball, you go flying.

Hihi, i always play like that when i'm small coz its more easy.Try tell them that the posture is wrong and need to be correct it if they want to play wel!!

hi, one little tip i can offer on flat fingered playing as i have quite a few students from other teachers with this problem, is to get them to work through some of the simple dozen a day books, i tend to pretty much ignore hand position if its already bad on their pieces but concentrate extremely hard on it when on the exercises (which are very small and very easy and they find it easy to concentrate on this aspect). eventually the hand position filters through from technical exercises to their overall playing, although this does take some time!

one other thing is that even with my very younger students, i get them to work quite hard on their technique from the beginning as it is much easier to teach it at this stage than to recorrect it later. I have found that students who sit with generally good posture rarely have a bad hand position, so encouraging the girls to sit like a ballerina and the boys to sit like a soldier can help enormously,

dont know if this helps any :)

I think it is rather important to ensure good posture of the hands and fingers right from the first lesson. Students often believe that the only way to reach certain notes is to stretch out and flatten the little finger, but if this is pointed out early on, soon realise it is unnecessary to flatten the little finger in order to reach a certain note.

When the little finger is flattened, there is enormous tension in the fourth finger, which is very restricting for control and speed and can create uneven playing.

It certainly is true that young students certainly do have plenty to think about in the first few lessons, but I would be more tempted to put any incorrect positioning of the fingers right before a habit is formed. It can be very difficult to break a habit once it has formed.

My old piano teacher never told me I was playing with flat fingers and that that was a bad thing so when I changed teachers I was horrified to find out. I wish she had told me, but I haven't found it that hard a problem to solve.

I have my 4 year old (boy) students pretend their fingers are the legs of a really cool daddy long legs spider (very long and thin legs) and then have them try to walk up the piano keys, then at one point I have them play something with the curved fingers and I then have them play with flat fingers and then I explain the the flat fingers are when the poor old spider was squashed and he couldn't play well because his legs were broken and we can't play well ourselves if our fingers are like the poor spider, the boys always remember this and for the most part tend to remember to play with curved fingers, if they forget I give them a reminder about the poor spider.

For the girls it's a simialr thing except they have beautiful curved ballerina fingers like when they do swan lake (this is where I get up and demostrate the postions, the kids love it).

I know for me this seems to be the only way I can get them to keep their fingers curved, I have tried other things but this works the best.