Last week, I offered a summer music camp for my piano students.
Despite how much I love running summer camps, it’s actually been a handful of years since I last offered one! The reason for the break was a combination of factors: relocating in December of 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a few years of pregnancies and raising my daughters through the baby/toddler stages.
Now that my own two children are a little bit older and my studio is made up almost entirely of local Michigan students, I decided this was the year I wanted to get back to offering a summer camp.
I quickly learned, upon surveying my studio families, that in the Ann Arbor area, summer camp information is typically published in January. I was very last-minute with getting my dates and details together, but I hoped I would get a small group of students registered this year nonetheless. I added a reminder in my calendar to start planning earlier next year. 🙂
My own daughters were extremely excited about my summer camp endeavor. My six-year-old was a great helper with setting up the space and materials for camp.
I gave my three-year-old a trial run on the first day, telling her she could continue attending the camp if she was on her best behavior. She did great. 🙂
On the final day of camp, I was also grateful to have one of my high school students assist as a volunteer helper.
Because I sold my grand piano two weeks ago, I have a giant hole in my studio room that was the perfect spot for setting up card tables for camp. 🙂
As I’ve done for many years back when I lived in Ohio, I typically run my Music History Blast from the Past camp as a four-day experience, meeting two hours each day Monday through Thursday.
I informed my students on the first day that a main objective of this camp is to learn to listen to an unfamiliar piece of classical music and identify the style period (or, at least, take a good guess). This is the same goal my college professor had for us during the first semester of music history class. Younger students can do it too!
I used my own bestselling Great Composers & Their Music lapbook curriculum for this camp, plus some of the resources from my Eras of Music History Resource Kit (one of my most underrated items in my digital shop, in my opinion).
To see in detail how I structure and lesson plan each day of camp, see this post. But basically, we dedicate time each day to studying a style period (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th/21st Centuries) and a given composer from that style period.
Here’s a peek at how the week unfolded.
This year, the four composers I chose to study from each style period were George Frideric Handel, Franz Joseph Haydn, Robert Schumann, and Scott Joplin. Students had a great time assembling their lapbook — a bit like an interactive scrapbook — each day while I read the composer biography to them.
Halfway through each day, we enjoyed a simple snack break. (My go-to snacks for camp are pretzels, fruit snacks, grapes, and popsicles.)
At the end of each day, we had a listening activity. First, we listened to examples of music from that day’s studied style period and discussed the musical elements we heard that are distinct to that period. Then, we had a listening quiz where I played examples of music from the previous day’s style period as well as the newly studied period, and students identified the style period. I also asked them to explain the clues they heard that led them to their answer.
Students learned to listen for polyphony — layers of melodies — as a clue for the Baroque era, for example. Hearing homophony — a single clear melody with accompaniment — and/or Alberti bass offered clues for music of the Classical period. They also noted the virtuosity and extreme dramatic changes in works from the Romantic period, and the dissonance and extended techniques used in works from the 20th and 21st centuries.
The music excerpts I chose to play for my students were of course somewhat obvious examples, however, I feel it is still quite an accomplishment that they can hear these clues and make a reasonable guess as to the style period just by listening!
If you’d like to try this listening quiz activity with your students, you’re welcome to use my YouTube playlist here.
I’m so pleased with how camp went this year, and I’m already looking forward to offering another camp next year.
