Games, Group Classes, Printables, seasonal / holiday

January 2013 Piano Party!

Joy Morin

Last Saturday, I held another Piano Party for my students.  I had record attendance: 14 students!  Here’s a run-down of what we did:

We introduced ourselves, and shared our favorite Christmas present this year.

Christmas Recital and Name-That Tune game.  Yes, I know Christmas is over!  Because of how busy December often can be, I decided to try scheduling our students-only Christmas recital in early January instead.  Besides, students always play their Christmas pieces through the break anyway, so they might as well do the recital after that!

I took advantage of the fact that my students would be playing familiar tunes, and held a name-that-tune game.  I gave each student the worksheet below, and they had to write down the titles as they heard them.  If they got it correct, they got to color in the star on the right, in order to keep track of how many they guessed correctly.  This was a huge hit!  Even the students who didn’t know very Christmas tunes were able to learn some new ones by the end.

DSC_20130105_124025

You can download the Name-That-Tune worksheet by visiting the Printables > Games page and scrolling down to “Name-That-Tune – Christmas Edition.” Continue reading “January 2013 Piano Party!” →

Early Childhood Music, Games, Group Classes, Music Camps, Printables

Grand Staff Pass Game

Joy Morin

I’m back!  I took a long blogging break over the holidays, but I’m super excited to be back and I have lots of things to share in the upcoming weeks!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years’.

Today, I am excited to share with you about a fun game I came up with for my students’ Piano Party last Saturday:

DSC_20130105_123608

“Grand Staff Pass” is a activity for finding and naming notes on the grand staff.  Each student has a printed grand staff in front of them, and must find the notes as indicated on the cards.  The cards are passed to the next student, going counterclockwise around the room.   Continue reading “Grand Staff Pass Game” →

Giveaways

Star Dust Sheet Music Giveaway – Dec 2012

Joy Morin

Thank you to all who entered the giveaway for Elena Cobb’s beautiful piano solo, Star Dust!  Here are the three winners, chosen via random number generator:

  • #23: Jenny
  • #40: Jenny Bouson
  • #9: Erica Forkner

Congrats to our winners!  Winners, please check your email inbox for an email from me.

If you didn’t win but still want Elena’s Star Dust, visit her website here to learn more about her music.  Many thanks to Elena for offering her music for this Christmas giveaway!  🙂

Games, Group Classes

December 2012 Piano Party

Joy Morin

A week from last Saturday, I held another piano party with my students.  Unfortunately, I neglected to take photos AGAIN, despite the fact that my camera was ready within reach.  Bummer!  🙂

Here is a list of the activities we did during our hour-and-a-half together:

  1. Music Jenga (as students arrive)
  2. BANG rhythm game – as I described more fully in a previous post.
  3. Musical Truth or Dare – This is a new game by Jennifer Fink from Pianimation.com.  It worked really well for my multi-level group of students because she has provided three different levels of cards.  I used Levels 1 and 2 with my students.  To put a holiday twist on this activity, I put the Level 1 cards in a santa hat and the Level 2 cards in an elf hat (hats were bought at the dollar store a few years ago).  My students loved this game and asked to play it again next month! DSC_20121213_110219
  4. Carol Dictation Worksheet – This worksheet is also by Jennifer Fink.  Students worked on their own to notate the rhythm of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”
  5. Student performances – I allowed each student to play a piece or two that they are working on.
  6. Debussy lapbook – This lapbook will be available in the ColorInMyPiano shop sometime in January!

I always try to hit on a variety of skills during these group classes, and we sure did this time!  We covered terminology, rhythm, dictation (aural skills), performing, and music history!

Giveaways

Stardust Giveaway – December 2012

Joy Morin

Remember the review I wrote in October about Elena Cobb’s books?  Well, Elena has kindly offered a Christmas giveaway for the pdf sheet music for my favorite selection from her Blue River book: “Stardust!”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG-ra8QXhAE

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post before midnight EST on Sunday, December 16, 2012.  The THREE winners will be announced Monday the 17th.

Games, Group Classes, Printables, Rhythm

Bang! Rhythm Game

Joy Morin

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” →

seasonal / holiday

James Koerts’ Free Arrangement of “Joy To The World”

Joy Morin

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 and go (open-house style) to admire a beautiful display of nativity sets.

In preparation, I’ve been practicing all my favorite Christmas arrangements – and learning a few new ones, too.  I discovered a wonderful free arrangement of “Joy To The World” on James Koerts’ website — take a listen below, and then click here and scroll down to download it yourself!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bFXRNDKNH4

Printables, seasonal / holiday

Free Christmas Photo Card Template

Joy Morin

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 year.  🙂

The best part about designing your own photo card template is that they are much cheaper to print.  I paid the normal rate for printing 4×6 photos at my local store (rather than paying extra to use the templates provided in the machines at photo centers).

If you would like to use this template too, you are welcome to it!  Due to the size of this file (15MB), I have added it to DropBox and you can download it here.  You will need access to a program like Photoshop (Photoshop Elements or Lightroom is fine) to edit the text and insert your own photo.  Here are the directions:

  1. Open the file in Photoshop.
  2. Select the text layer, and change the words to your family members’ names.
  3. Select the layer called “Put your photo here!”  Open a photo of your family, and then drag and drop it to replace the current image.
  4. Go to File > Save As.  Change the file format to jpeg, title the file whatever you wish, and save it to your desktop.
  5. Print the photo using your favorite online service, or put the file on a flashdrive to take to your local store.

I hope your holiday plans are going well!

Early Childhood Music, Games, Group Classes, Music Camps

Floor Staff Activity: Introduction to the Grand Staff

Joy Morin

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.  🙂