About
Pianokids is the brainchild of Angela Grace. Ms. Angela, as she is known to her students, has taught piano for 35 years to students from ages 3 to 73. Her love of singing and playing piano started at 8 years old taking traditional piano lessons, performing in classic recitals, and eventually serving in several music responsibilities in church.
Her academic studies and early career interest were in Public Relations, Sales and Marketing while continuing to maintain a small piano studio. It wasn’t long before both interest merged when she was asked to create a marketing campaign for a world-renowned piano company.
A Totally
In 1989, Ms. Angela was invited to participate in the creation of a national piano program for preschoolers. After several years of collaborating and developing, she created Piano Kids, Inc. in her local area in 1994. With her “outside the box” training of teaching children to play piano at 3 – 5 years of age (instead of waiting until they could read) she knew how to use age appropriate concepts to help young children learn applied music skills at such critical years of development. She maintained a private studio and a preschool program with approximately 300 students per year in daycares and afterschool program in the NW FL area for many years.
In 2010, Ms. Angela finally began to answer the request of parents with young children living outside of her area. She started developing Pianokids.com so families everywhere could enjoy introducing the piano to their preschool age children. She designed and conducted a Beta test with families all over the country to test her Pianokids Preschool Piano Program with concepts that she had been teaching for almost 30 years. It was an overwhelming success and gave her the confidence that parents would be interested and consistent in helping their children learn to play piano with the support her online program provided.
The online Pianokids Program launches in August 2020. The fruition of many years of work, this project began long ago with Ms. Angela and her late father, Stanley Bills. Drawing and composing material together to create the first books, Angela and Stanley built the foundation of the curriculum that families everywhere will now enjoy.
The Original
Married to her high school sweetheart, Ms Angela is the proud mother of Erica, Evan and Erin. You will recognize those names in the Pianokids lesson books, as her family was used as the inspiration for the cartoon characters.
Realizing the potential of her program, Ms Angela started teaching her children the curriculum as they each reached three years old. They continued playing piano as well as other instruments.
Both of Ms Angela’s daughters taught in her studio where Erin continues to be the Virtual Piano Studio instructor for Pianokids.