Guess what! Tomorrow is Color In My Piano’s THREE YEAR anniversary! Woohoo! I’ve got a few fun posts and giveaways planned for later this week in honor of our anniversary. But today, I thought I’d share this new printable:
Continue reading “Just Added: Music Staff Paper for Stickers of all Sizes”
Susan Johannessen shared this cute variation of the Piano Valentine idea I shared on Monday on the ColorInMyPiano facebook page…
Love this!!
If you have photos of the valentines you’d made, please send them to me at admin[AT]colorinmypiano.com. I would love see your creativity!
Today, I have a fun little printable and tutorial to share just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Continue reading “Piano Valentine Craft (Printable & Tutorial)”
This is a simple game to play with groups of students that makes note-naming flashcards a bit more interesting. It involves sorting the flashcards onto alphabet letter signs on the floor, as pictured on the right (the “A” flashcards would go in the blank space on the right side of the page).
The game is pretty flexible, because beforehand you can sort out exactly which flashcards you want to focus on with your students. This also allows you to control how long you wish the game to continue.
You can also use different flashcards. With my Homeschool Music Class this week, we used my Piano Key naming flashcards (they came with the MiniMusic set I purchased earlier this year). With my Piano Readiness Class, we’ve been doing on-staff work so we used regular staff-note-naming flashcards (I use this set from Faber & Faber
Another tip with this game: if you are using the note-naming flashcards, arrange the musical alphabet signs on the floor in a column, so that A is at the bottom and G is at the top. I recommend this because this arrangement resembles the staff, where the musical alphabet progresses vertically. If you are using piano-key-naming flashcards, I would arrange the signs on the floor horizontally, just like the keyboard.
Download the pdf of the alphabet signs and detailed gameplay instructions by visiting the Printables > Games page. Scroll down to the M’s for “Musical Flashcard Sorting game.”
Musical Flashcard Sorting game (1.2 MiB, 13,002 hits)
I was recently browsing some forums online and found a description of this game by a music educator. It sounds like a great game to use with large groups of students — perhaps for group lessons or summer camps. I asked the music educator if I could post about the game on my blog, and she kindly agreed. In her own words: “You certainly have my permission to share the game. I made it up, but someone else probably has, too. We all get ideas from one another and put them together in different ways.” I love her attitude and generosity! We teachers have so much we can share and learn from each other.
This composing/rhythm game is appropriate for groups of about 8 or more students. All you need are 4 pieces of paper with the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 written on them. These sheets serve to mark the beats of the measure, spaced out on the floor. One student is chosen as the Composer, who must select students and make them into quarter notes/half notes/whatever. Once the measure is complete, everyone claps the rhythm and the teacher records the rhythm onto a whiteboard to save it. A new Composer is chosen to compose the next measure. In the end, everyone claps the entire rhythmic composition to see what it sounds like.
I haven’t tried out this game yet, but it sounds fun! And it’s not always easy to find games that work for large groups of students. I just might try out this game at my studio Christmas party coming up. 🙂
Complete game instructions can be printed by downloading the pdf on the Printables > Games page. I thought the game needed a more specific title, so I came up with “Make Me A Rhythm!”
This is a short music game I created as a way to reinforce the names of the piano keys with young beginners. It only takes a few minutes to play, but my students seemed to enjoy it. It gives them a break from the usual drill I do, where I have them find 3 different C’s on the piano, etc. 🙂
Here’s how it works:
You’ll need to buy fabric or foam leaves and mark each with a letter from the musical alphabet using a marker or felt tip pen. The student is instructed to match each leaf to it’s spot on the tree, until the whole tree is filled. The game only takes a few minutes, so it’s a great game to do on the piano bench at the beginning or end of a piano lesson.
Any leftover fabric leaves can be used to decorate your Thanksgiving day table in a few weeks. 🙂
To Download: go to the Printables > Games page and scroll down to “Musical Leaves Matchup game.”
With my Piano Readiness Class, we’ve been learning about staff notation. Last week, each student composed a mini-composition on the piano and then we together notated the piece. We used colorful markers to label the notes (A, B, C, etc) and also wrote in finger numbers, so they can continue playing their compositions at home. They loved the idea of being composers!
This is the sheet paper we used to notate our compositions. Young students tend to draw rather large notes 🙂 , so I left plenty of room between the lines of the staff.
To download, visit the Printables > Other Resources page and scroll down to “Staff Paper — Large Staff for Simple Compositions.”
There are others who have shared alphabet card printables similar to what I’m posting today, but I’m adding mine to the mix anyway. 🙂 I wanted some that would work well to print onto colored cardstock paper. Since I don’t have a color printer, this is an easy way I can still get colorful things to use with my students!
I used these cards with my new weekly Homeschool Music Class (just started last week, thanks to Sheryl’s recent post at her Notable Music Studio blog) and with my Piano Readiness Class. My students LOVED making “musical alphabet snakes” in order to learn how the musical alphabet is different from the regular alphabet. Included in the pdf is a card which outlines some other possible activities to do using the cards. These activities work great in both group settings and private lessons.
Do you have some other activities to share that involve alphabet cards? Share them in the comments!
To Download: visit the Printables > Other Resources page and scroll down to the M’s for Musical Alphabet Cards.
Musical Alphabet Cards (275.9 KiB, 17,103 hits)
With my Piano Readiness Class, we’ve been learning about the instruments and the instrument families. To do this, I decided to create a workbook for my students to be able to take notes about the instruments and color a picture of each one.
Description: This 29-page workbook contains coloring pages and blank lines for taking notes when learning about the musical instruments and the instrument families. It is ideal for a regularly-meeting group setting, where the teacher can introduce an instrument or two each week. Continue reading “Just Added: Musical Instruments Workbook”
I’ve mentioned before that during grad school, I took an Early Childhood Music course. One of the things we discussed was using the “sound before sight” philosophy – where the student is exposed to and experiences the concepts before being taught the name or the written notation. I’ve been doing my best to use this philosophy of teaching music with my Piano Readiness students.
I was reminded of a raindrops & rainbows rhythm game one of my classmates created for an assignment during that course when I saw Anne Crosby’s recent post, which mentioned an activity involving finger-painting raindrops/rainbows. It immediately occurred to me that the girls in my Piano Readiness Class would LOVE a game involving rainbows, so I put together this printable. It’s nothing groundbreaking; I’m sure teachers before me have done similar things. But hopefully this printable might be as useful and convenient for some of you as it was for me!
I have two 5-year-old students signed up for a Piano Readiness Class, and our first class was yesterday! We had such a fun time. We sang songs, listened to music to find/walk to the beat, traced our hands to learn about RH/LH/finger numbers, and more. Best of all, we played the Piano Hands Hunt game — a simple game I invented on a whim yesterday as I was lesson planning. It was quite a hit! The girls asked to play it again next week — a request I’m happy to oblige!
Just added to the Printables > Games page:
Piano Hands Hunt — a music game for 2-6 players. This simple game is intended for use with young beginners/elementary level students to help them learn RH versus LH, and the finger numbers for piano. Continue reading “Beginner Piano Game: Piano Hands Hunt”
Just added to the Printables > Studio Business page:
Studio Planning Calendar
I needed some kind of calendar to keep track of both short-term and long-term studio-related projects…and came up with this! Each month has space for 8 dates or “to-do” items. The check boxes are so you can “check off” those to-do items with the utmost satisfaction. 🙂
Here are some of the things I’m keeping track of using this calendar:
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