Merry Christmas, readers! I will be taking a break from blogging for the next couple of weeks. My husband and I are looking forward to spending time visiting family and enjoying the holidays! Happy holidays, and I’ll “see” you in the year! – Joy
To follow up on the Forum Q&A post about gifts for students, here are some photos of the Christmas cookies I gave out to my students this year:
This weekend, my students and I are preparing to play Christmas pieces at a local church’s “Come To The Stable” event. I reserved an hour on Thursday and Saturday when we are going to play (I will fill whatever time my students don’t use). Our music will serve as the background music as people come [...]
I can’t believe it is December already! This year, I decided to design my own music-themed Christmas photo card to send out to my family and give to my piano students. My husband and I have started a tradition of taking a photo of ourselves with our cats (donned in their mini Santa hats) each [...]
Here’s what I gave my students for Christmas this year: A Symphony chocolate bar, and a personalized glass ornament. I found the glass ornaments at a craft store (Hobby Lobby). On each ornament, I wrote the student’s name and “2011″ on the ornament using a paint pen. I put colorful confetti and pieces of [...]
Well, my students’ Christmas party/recital was a success! What a great way to finish off the year. The recital took place in my home. Whenever my college music history textbooks mentioned Schubertiads, I used to dream about the idea of having informal music performance parties in my home. Since my studio is still small, [...]
My apologies for being MIA from the blog the last few weeks! At the beginning of the semester, I put up posters around the music building of the university in my town for freelancing as a collaborative pianist. A few music majors contacted me rather last minute to ask if I’d accompany them for their [...]
As I’m sure is currently the case with many of you, my students are working on Christmas pieces along with their usual assignments. As usual, a few of them have encountered rhythmic “simplifications” in their arrangements (Away in a Manger and Go Tell it on the Mountain come to mind). After pointing it out the [...]
I finally started my Christmas shopping this past weekend, and this morning I sightread some Christmas duets with a piano teacher friend of mine. :) Now I’m really starting to feel in the Christmas spirit! This December, I’m planning a studio Christmas Party for my students. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I [...]
After posting about the sheet music ornament star last week, I was inspired to dig around the web for other music-related crafts! There are tons of ways to recycle old sheet music (which you can often find at thrift stores, garage sales, auctions, and antique stores). Here’s a sampling of what I found! All links [...]
Someone on the “piano-teachers” Yahoo group forum brought this to my attention – the Better Homes and Gardens magazine’s website has instructions for a craft for making a sheet music Christmas ornament (picture on right). It looks like a wonderful way to make your Christmas tree a little more musical! The star pattern allows you [...]
Christmas is on the way, whether you are ready or not! My students are already starting to ask about Christmas music, so I’m doing some digging on the web to find places to print easy Christmas arrangements for free. Read this post to check out the list I’ve compiled.
Joy is a pianist and teacher in Ohio with great passion for helping students experience the wonders of music making!
