After finding the new Fun & Learn Music website last night, I simply had to share the link with you all. This website has a large variety of FREE music worksheets, organized by subject. The worksheets are clear and to-the-point, but also cute and fun for students. I will definitely be using many of these worksheets with my students in the future!
Fun & Learn Music also has a Shop area, where they sell complete theory books and a couple of rhythm games that look really fun and well-designed. I can’t wait to see how this site develops in the future!
Check out their website here, and their facebook page here.
This website looks great! I am excited to look through some of their worksheets and use them in teaching. Thanks for sharing!
I have a young student (6 yrs old, she’s been in piano for a few years, using the My First Piano Adventure books) who is still having trouble connecting notes with their names and their keys. We drill note names nearly every week, usually with a game of sorts, but she still has trouble remembering. Any worksheets or games that you would suggest trying?
I would first make sure she can say the musical alphabet verbally forwards and backwards. This seems basic, but believe it or not, sometimes beginners miss this step, and then note reading makes little sense to them! The next step is making sure the student knows the names of all the piano keys. My favorite thing to do is to ask them to find 3 C’s on the piano, and then 3 D’s (etc.). I also like using The Amazing Keyboard Race game.
Then, I would do some worksheets or activities making sure she sees the difference between line and space notes. I’ve had students think line notes mean the note is sitting “on” (meaning, between) the lines — which is actually what we call a space note. Knowing line and space notes is crucial to identifying intervals (steps versus skips) and to connecting the musical alphabet to seeing steps on the staff. (Also, make sure the student is looking at the note head in order to identify the note, rather than the stem.)
After that, choose a couple of notes on the staff to focus on, probably starting with Middle C. Give the student a sheet of large staff paper, and ask them to draw 5 Middle C’s as their theory assignment. The next week, have them draw D’s and Middle C’s. Continue in the same manner, gradually adding new notes. Whenever you practice quizzing notes on the staff, have the student first say the letter name of the note aloud, and then play that note on the piano immediately after. Instead of using flashcards, I now use the Music Flash Class app on my iPhone. It’s faster and easier — it lets you choose the range of notes to practice, and my phone is always near me when I teach.
That is the methodical progress I usually go through when I encounter a student who seems to be having trouble understanding something about the process of note-reading. I’m sure you can find worksheets and games that correspond to each step at some of the various websites and blogs that offer free music worksheets! Check out the Links page for some sites to get started. Good luck!
Joy,
thanks for the suggestions! I think that having her write the notes out will help a lot too. She also composed a few weeks ago as part of her assignment, and i think that helping her transcribe the song will also help her to understand the correlation between notes on the page, letter names, and keys on the piano. Thanks again!
I’m having a hard time getting the website to load. Tried it in safari and firefox and no luck so far. Will keep trying. This looks like a great site! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
I think it’s back up now! Have fun browsing!
I’m sorry the website is still down for me. It seems they are having some database problems. I’ll check their worksheets latter.
Just love this new (to me) site. Thanks for letting us all know about it. As I have mostly beginners, it is always good to have attractive worksheets to add a bit of interest. Many thanks Joy
Your suggestions you put in the comments section for helping students with note-reading are so helpful! You could write an entire post highlighting your tips. I’m sure it would get lots of views.
Great idea, Shannon…I’m going to write a full post with my thoughts on note-reading right now.
I love this website!! Playing theory games has always been an integral part of the lessons I teach. I can’t wait to print off these games and try them with my students next weekend!! 🙂
Thanks for sharing this new website! I’m excited to see how it grows. Although I seem to have problems loading some of the pages. Sometimes it works but then half the time I get a message saying “Wordfence has limited your access to this site…” Anybody else having issues?
Hi Joy,
Thanks so much for your help over the last month. We had a soft launch of our site and were excited to see the traffic increase after your post. We were also scrambling to increase our server bandwidth to handle the happy surprise.
I think we have the server issues fixed now, and thanks to you we have had lots of visitors download hundreds of worksheets.
Thanks again!
James
Sure, I’m always happy to help spread the word about great resources like yours! Sorry about causing the overage in your server bandwidth, though! 🙂