Kids Guitar Lessons: Everything You Need To Get Started On Your Guitar Journey

If kids guitar lessons are what you’re after, you’re in the right place!

In this free guitar lesson you will learn:

• 7 super-easy guitar chords that are perfect for kids or new guitar learners!
• 6 easy songs which will make you sound amazing. (Complete with tabs and chord diagrams.)
• The secrets of the guitar anatomy.

Your kids will love these free guitar lessons that are both fun and educational.

Although these are kids guitar lessons, you could have a go with them. Who knows? You might be tempted to take up the guitar as well!

Let’s go!

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Is your child old enough to learn guitar?

If you ask us, about 9 or 10 is the best age to start learning guitar. However, plenty of kids start learning even younger (and let’s not forget those who learn later in life!).

Children younger than 5 will struggle with guitar and might manage better with a ukulele. If they manage well with the ukulele, they can always graduate onto a guitar when they’re bigger.

Luckily, guitars are available in a range of sizes. We cover them in this article: Guitar Sizes – A Guide To The 10 Sizes of Guitar

Check it out if you’re uncertain what guitar your child needs.

If you’re on the fence about whether your child should learn guitar or not, we’d recommend this article which goes through a number of the pros of learning an instrument such as building confidence, developing social skills, improving general academic skills, as well as discipline, patience and time management: The 6 Benefits Of Music Lessons

So, which bit of the guitar is which?

Before we get stuck into any chords, let’s very quickly learn which bit of the guitar is which.

This will help us avoid any confusion.

Here’s a useful diagram:

The frets are the most importnat bit of the guitar for us to learn as they’re what we press the strings against.

What are the guitar string names?

This phrase will help you remember the guitar string names:

Eddie.

Ate.

Dynamite.

Good.

Bye.

Eddie.

or…

Elephants.

And.

Donkeys.

Grow.

Big.

Ears.

You might have noticed, we have two E strings?

This might confuse you.

The thickest string is called the low E because the sound it makes is a low sound.

The thinnest string is called the high E because the sound it makes is a high sound.

To learn more about guitar string notes, go here: Guitar String Notes: The Ultimate Guide

NB: Your child’s guitar needs to be properly tuned. Little kids will struggle to do this themselves, so it’s a good idea to ask someone who already knows how to play guitar to help you out.

Here’s an article we have that will help you: How To Tune A Guitar

Kids Guitar Lessons: Learn Super-Easy Chords

You may be asking, “What’s a chord?”

A chord is several strings played together instead of one string at a time.

In kids guitar lessons, these are the chords we like to teach them.

They’re ideal for smaller fingers.

Let’s try a G chord.

This chord only needs ONE finger.

Here, the string we’re pressing is the thinnest string (the high E string) on the third fret.

You’ll notice on the diagram, the two thickest strings (the low E and the A strings) are marked with an ‘X’.

This tells us not to play those. Give it a go. Strum the G chord!

Want to learn how to read chord diagrams? Check out this article: How To Read Chord Boxes.

How was that?

If you’re struggling to not strum the ‘X’ marked strings, here’s a suggestion:

Strum lighter.

Strumming a guitar doesn’t need a load of wallop. Just a nice light strum will get the job done and give us a little more control of our playing.

If you have this sort of image of a guitarist in your head, try to forget it.

This is more like it. Keeping the arm on the guitar body:

It’s most likely easiest to strum using with your thumb or your index finger at the moment. However, as you progress, it’s FAR easier to use a guitar pick.

To learn more about guitar picks, go here: How To Hold A Guitar Pick In 3 Easy Steps

Let’s have a go at another chord.

This chord’s name is C. It’s perfect for beginners because it only uses 1 finger.

We’re pressing down the second string (the B string) at the first fret here.

You’ll also notice, like with the G chord that some strings are marked ‘X’. As with the G, don’t play anything marked with an ‘X’.

Strum the C chord!

Now… don’t lift your finger off yet. There’s a super fast change we can make to turn the C chord into an Am chord.

All we’ve done here is add the second finger to the second fret on the third string (the G string).

So changing between C and Am just means we lift the second finger up and down.

Have you  noticed that the G and the C chords sound quite happy and bright, but the Am sounds quite sad and moody?

That’s how we tell the difference between major chords and minor chords.

Minor chords sound sad.

Learn 12 EASY beginner chords with our popular guide

✅  Stop struggling. Start making music.

✅  Learn beginner-friendly versions of every chord.

This is our most popular guide and it will improve your chord ability quickly! 😎

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So now we’ve learned our first chords, it’s time to learn a song.

We’re going to look at a number of songs in these kids guitar lesson, so there should be something in here that you’ll enjoy playing.

If you’re a pop fan, you’ll love this song.

‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift

For this song, we need our Am, C and G chords.

If you need a reminder, here they are:

Here’s a simple chord chart of the song:

| Am       |  C           | G          |              |

We want to play:

• The Am chord four times.
  
• The C chord four times.
  
• The G chord eight times.

The sequence goes round and round and round and round. Try it!

Here’s a video demonstration to help you:

Let’s look at another song…