Look ma, both hands!

Today I caved.

"Alfred's Basic Piano Library: Ages 5-8+" is in my book bag right now.

So far I've successfully played the first four measures of a children's song. And I'm pretty impressed with it.

How I look playing my first song.
(Photo credit: pianoandsyth.com)

How I feel playing my first song.
(Photo credit: peninsulareviews.com)

This is the easiest, but definitely not the best, technique I have found for reading sheet music...without actually knowing how to read sheet music: 

• Use FACE to count up the spaces of a treble clef and Every Good Boy Does Fine to count up the lines.
• Find the corresponding note on the piano: CDEFGAB (the C is the white key just to the left of a group of two black keys)
• From now until the time I am confident about where each note is written, I use relativity to help me play faster. E.g. if a note is one step down from the note before, I play the note directly to the left of the first one. If it is two steps down, I play two notes away, etc.

This method is the easy way out of learning the notes. It is not recommended, since really learning them can help you in the long run. But until then, I have found this to be a quicker way of just jumping into the melody without having to stop and recite a mnemonic device before playing each note.