Dear Jill, I’m a Suzuki Harp Teacher in Italy…you are a great mother and your questons are correct! I suggest to contact a Suzuki Teacher in your city and she’ll help you. There are a lot of books for beginners, for example Suzuki Harp Book, but in Europe we use mainly “Method for the Harp” by Gabriella Bosio, the Suzuki Teacher Trainer in our continet..at the beginning there’re no differences between a 40 and a 34 string lever harp, the student works on the technique..the time before switching over the pedal harp..it dipends only from the student! greetings from Italy,
Caterina