On Pinterest, I saw an idea for a sight-word game called BANG and decided it would make an excellent music game. Here is my musical version:
I tried it out with my students at our Piano Party last Saturday, and it was a hit. The BANG! cards add an element of fun to an otherwise ordinary flashcard drill. Continue reading “Bang! Rhythm Game”
Remember last February when I created this DIY floor staff? I thought I’d share a little activity that shows how I used it recently with my Piano Readiness Class.
(Don’t mind my cat, Coda, who totally photo-bombed this photo. 🙂
The two students I was working with have already learned to identify high and low sounds when we sing or listen to music, and can recognize the treble and bass clef symbols. I showed them the floor staff (which they were totally excited about), and asked them to count the number lines and spaces with me. I demonstrated that notes can either be line notes or space notes. Then, I put the treble clef and bass clef on the floor staff, for high and low sounds.
After that introduction, I handed each student a foam disc (you can find these in the craft section at many stores) and gave them two directions: (1) line or space note, and (2) high or low note. After placing notes on the staff in this way for a while, they realized there were also “middle” notes, so we started doing that too. Then we started doing it backwards: I asked them to put a note anywhere they wanted, and to tell me whether it was a line/space note and whether it was high/middle/low.
This turned out to be a fun little activity for introducing the staff to a couple of four-year-olds! The next step will be to associate the alphabet names to the lines and spaces. 🙂
Over the past week, I have added four new Great Composers & Their Music lapbook studies to the Color In My Piano shop!
The first one is John Cage. I mentioned this lapbook before, when I blogged about my October Piano Party. I think this composer study was my favorite one to teach so far! It was so fun to teach students about Cage’s ingenuity as a composer. As an extension, we explored the room to find “found instruments,” and experimented with prepared piano. (No, I didn’t bring screws or bolts anywhere near my piano…but we did try laying pieces of felt and tinfoil on the strings/dampers to see what sounds we could create!).
Last week, I blogged a little about my first “Piano Party” — the first of hopefully many more group classes I hold for my students! On Friday, I held our 2nd Piano Party for October.
I was so glad to observe my students greeting each other by name as they arrived. They recognized each other from the camps I held this past summer and from the previous piano party. Piano study can seem like such a solitary endeavor, but having group classes can help make it less so (which can be very motivating for some students). I am so pleased to see one of my goals for group classes already being met!
Anyway, let me tell you about how our group class went on Friday:
Thanks to Pinterest, I recently came across a blogger who designed some charming little finger puppets to go along with a few fingerplay songs she enjoys singing with her son! Her name is Kate, from the picklebums.com blog, and she generously offers each of the printables pictured below for free. I assembled a set of her beautiful finger puppets for my 4-year-old nephew as a birthday gift last month, and made myself a set, too, to use with my Piano Readiness class.
One of my all-time favorite fingerplays ever is Five Little Speckled Frogs (click for link to Kate’s puppet printable). I discovered this fingerplay during an Early Childhood Music course I took during graduate school.
Now that I have enough students to do so, I have begun holding monthly group lessons with my students. I tried it a few times last year, but ended up with a poor turnout both times. Fortunately, now I have enough students to make it worth the effort. I call them “Piano Parties.”
Right now, any of my students under age 15 are invited. My youngest private students are 4, so this makes for a very wide range of ages! Eventually, my goal would be to split them into groups by age/level, but for now, I am just happy to give them some kind of group lessons. I am keeping them very fun and informal.
Our first one was a back-to-piano pizza party last month, and I completely forgot to blog about it. Oops! 🙂 I’ll tell you about it now. Continue reading “My New Monthly Group Lessons: “Piano Parties””
Three new Great Composers Lapbook & Biography sets have been added to the ColorInMyPiano Shop!
They are:
Continue reading “3 New Composer Lapbook sets Now Available”
With my music homeschool class, we have been studying the instruments of the orchestra. We started this endeavor a long time ago, starting with completing the Musical Instruments Workbook. We have also used Robert Levine’s book: The Story of the Orchestra, and frequently played this review game for remembering the names/families of the instruments.
When I found this “stand-up symphony” download from the St. Louis Symphony website, I knew this would be another great way to review the instruments — as well to as learn where the members of the orchestra sit onstage.
This was such a fun class project! Over the course of a couple of months, we cut out the figures, colored them, and then folded/taped them so they could stand. Continue reading “Instruments of the Orchestra Study – FREE Orchestra Stage Pieces”
Over the last few months, I’ve created a collection of signs to use with my Piano Readiness and Homeschool Music classes:
I use them during class when I am teaching or reviewing concepts. They can be useful for games too. For example, I like to have students hold up or point to the correct symbol while I improvise high/low or loud/soft music on the piano. I printed them on cardstock and laminated them to make them more durable.
There are other ways to use these signs: They can be printed for beginner private students to keep as a reference. Or, they can be hung up in on the wall in your studio.
You can download the pdf by visiting the Printables > Other Resources page and scrolling down to the S’s for “Signs for Beginner Piano.” I hope you can find some way to use these with your students!
Last week, I blogged all about my recent Music History camp and I also promised a free download of the lapbook of the music history periods. The pdf is ready for download! Read on for the details.
Continue reading “Freebie: Music History Periods Lapbook Study”
Greetings!
I have a big announcement today: I have just added a “Shop” page to ColorInMyPiano.com, where I have listed a few items for sale! Don’t worry…I’ll always share lots of freebies too, but I have some bigger projects that I’d like to make available in the shop. 🙂 Right now, I’ve got two items listed:
Rhythm Cards – Level 1. These cards have simple two- or three- measure rhythm examples on them, perfect for using with beginner students.
Last October, well-loved pedagogue Marvin Blickenstaff appeared at the Ohio Music Teachers Conference I attended. I blogged a summary of my notes from a great session he gave called “Performance Practice Made Easy”, which was all about “Rules of Thumb” to give for students during group classes about playing musically. If you would like more details about Marvin’s wonderful “Rules of Thumb,” check out the recent July/August issue of Clavier Companion magazine! There’s an article on page 34 by Marvin with plenty of examples. Be sure to check it out!
P.S.: If you are not already subscribed to Clavier Companion, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s my favorite magazine — I love getting inspired by all their great articles. It’s very affordable, too — especially their new digital-only subscription option!
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