trombone and clarinet

One of the advantages of being part of a small church is that not-so-great instrumentalists can take part. Our basic set up is pretty solid (piano, bass, guitar, drums) and over summer we're adding some kids into the mix. 

10 year old Josh is our summer drummer. He's pretty good. Amazingly good actually. I forget it's him drumming when I'm on piano.

My boy Nathan (10) has also started to join in. He plays one song each week on trombone. I write him out a very simple part that won't get in the way.

Joel (9) will be learning clarinet next year. We brought the clarinet home from school early to give him a head start. He's making his church debut tomorrow with a nice little alto line in silent night. Joel is a scream. He can't read stave notation at all (heck, he can barely read normal writing!) so I wrote out his part in stick notation (ta's and te-te's with letter names underneath). That seemed to be going okay (with Andrew pointing to the notes) but when his music fell off the stand he said not to worry about it because it just made it harder. He then played it perfectly without music.

I need to think hard about how to teach Joel music. I know how to teach kids to read staff notation. Joel can parrot off Every-Good-Boy-Deserves-Fruit and F-A-C-E Face, but if he still can't read the words in a sentence accurately and in the correct order, what are the chances of him being able to read notes? Should I even bother trying this? Maybe I should teach him scales and chords so he understands how music works and then encourage him to just make it up.