Hi there! In this blog post, I’ll briefly discuss both the usefulness and shortcomings of mnemonic devices (such as “FACE” and “All Cows Eat Grass”) when it comes to music reading and then share with you a new FREE printable, pictured above.
Continue reading “Just added: Grand Staff Reference Sheet – Naming Space Notes”
Back in February 2021, I shared 12 podcasts for piano teachers to follow. There’s some really great podcasts in that list, so if you haven’t seen it I definitely recommend checking out that post before reading on below!
Since then, a number of new podcasts have launched — some of them very recently. In today’s blog post, I’d like to share with you another selection of 12 podcasts that are new or have come to my attention in recent months. I’ve included links to subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, but these podcasts are also available at Overcast, Spotify, or whatever your favorite podcast app. Just search them up by name.
I’ll begin with my must-listen recommendations, and then move into some podcasts I tend to follow only sporadically or am still checking out. I hope you find a few podcasts shows that might interest you!
First of all, I’ll tell you about The Piano Pantry Podcast — a brand new podcast from my good friend, Amy Chaplin of PianoPantry.com. As on her blog, Amy plans to discuss a combination of topics: teaching, organization, cooking/baking, and more. She has released two episodes so far, and I can’t wait to hear more! Subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.
Continue reading “12 Podcasts for Piano Teachers to Follow in 2022”Hello, friends! As previously announced, I recently released a new resource to my shop: The 12 Days of Christmas Project — a kit to help you and your students create a collaborative video performing the traditional carol, The 12 Days of Christmas. I know it’s an odd time to be talking more about it, because Christmas has just passed. But I wanted to share just a couple more things about it before I let it rest. 🙂
First of all, you might remember in my last blog post I had put out a call for music teachers who might be interested in being part of a “music teacher edition” video of the 12 Days of Christmas. We ended up with 26 music teachers total who participated! Here’s our resulting video. Hope you enjoy!
Second, I wanted to let you know that I created a walkthrough video that gives you a peek at what’s included in The 12 Days of Christmas kit. You can check that out here.
Continue reading “The 12 Days of Christmas Project…Music Teacher Edition! (2021)”
Do you enjoy giving some kind of small gift to your piano students at Christmastime? I don’t feel it’s something we as piano teachers should feel obligated to do. But if it’s something you enjoy, I think it’s a nice gesture! I look forward to coming up with something different each year.
[Click here to see gift ideas from past years!]
This year, inspired by a photo I saw on Instagram, I decided to seek out a local bakery to make some pretty piano cookies for my students. I requested quotes from two bakeries and was thrilled when the first one gave me a rate that was reasonable enough for my budget. I placed my order and couldn’t wait for the pick-up date to arrive.
Over the weekend, I picked up my cookie order. I was so thrilled and pleased with how they turned out! Aren’t they pretty?!
Aria, my constant sidekick, “helped” me put the cookies into individual baggies.
I couldn’t be happier with how these turned out!
Something else new I decided to try this year was to order custom pens with my studio logo. I thought it might be fun to include these pens in the Christmas gift this year, as well as to use around the studio and give out to new students when they join. I ordered through CustomInk.com, which has been a great company to work with in the past when I’ve done T-shirts for my students. The pens turned out nicely! It’s a good thing, because CustomInk.com have a minimum of 300 for pen orders. I will be well stocked for at least a few years! 😉
I also gave each student one of our family photo cards. To add a personal touch, I typed up a short holiday greeting printed onto sticky notes. (Did you know you can print onto sticky notes? It’s so handy for all kinds of projects! To learn how, check out this blog post.)
I packaged everything into bubble wrap mailers to send to my online students back in Ohio.
In my studio, I set up an area for my in-person students to receive their gifts. I’m excited to see my students’ faces when they see the cookies!
After all that hard work, Aria and I were ready to try out a cookie! It was our reward after a job well done. 🙂
[Check out the video version of this blog post here on Instagram!]
Your turn: Did you plan to give out students gifts this year? If so, what did you come up with? I invite you to leave a comment!
It’s been quite a while since I shared a new worksheet…until today! Here is a brand new worksheet about ledger lines that you are welcome to use with your piano students or music students of any instrument.
The top of the page includes a definition and a graphic demonstrating what ledger lines are. The rest of the page presents a number of ledger line notes and asks the student to identify the letter name of each note. It’s a simple worksheet that might be useful to send home with your students to reinforce the concept after you cover it during a lesson.
Download this FREE worksheet by visiting the Printables > Worksheets page and scrolling down to “Identifying Ledger Lines.”
Identifying Ledger Lines (92.4 KiB, 3,706 hits)
PS: I have several other worksheets of a similar format you might be interested in checking out: Introduction to the Staff worksheet, Line & Space Notes worksheet, Identifying Line & Space Notes on the Staff worksheet, Intervals Unison-3rd worksheet, and Intervals Unison-5th worksheet. Hope you enjoy!
Today’s blog post topic comes to you as a result of a question submitted by a reader. The question I received was essentially: How do you go about acquiring music books for piano students and managing the reimbursement/expense?
While there is no single “best” way to do business, there are certainly a number of good options to consider in order to find a procedure that works best for you and your clients. In this blog post, we’ll explore a handful of possible procedures and discuss their potential downsides and upsides.
As I see it, here are the main options for self-employed music teachers:
Let’s discuss each option in more depth.
Continue reading “Q: Who buys the music books — teacher or student?”
It’s that time of year — time to pull out my Trick-or-Treat! rhythm game! During the weeks leading up to Halloween, I like to use my Trick-or-Treat rhythm game at pretty much every student’s lesson. It’s a fun way to make students “earn” their treat, and it’s such a great game for building their rhythm skills. Best of all, they LOVE this game!
Continue reading “Getting out my Trick-or-Treat rhythm game!”
Back in 2017, I shared my “About Me” Student Profile cards that I hung on the walls in my studio. Now that I am moved back to Michigan and am settled in my new studio, I figured it was time to do something similar again! I love for my students to feel part of a studio community and be able to see each other’s faces, even if only thanks to photos. 😉
And so, I started browsing Pinterest and Amazon to find ideas for various ways to display student photos. In this blog post, I’ll share some of the best ideas I found as well as the resulting photo wall I ended up with for my students. I’ll also share a couple of free printables I created in the process, which you are welcome to use for your own photo wall. Read on, friends!
Continue reading “How to Create a “MEET OUR PIANISTS” Student Photo Wall”
In the past, I’ve shared about my easy, ongoing incentive program for my piano students. You can read a more complete blog post from 2009 about it here.
Basically, the summary is that for every 30 pages of music students learn (or theory pages completed), a prize is earned from the prize box. My goal was to have a simple program that was easy to track and that rewarded the kinds of things my students should be doing anyway. A simple incentive program can make things fun and help reinforce the kinds of things you wish students to be focused on. My students know that a given piece needs to reach a certain level of mastery before they can “pass” it and go on to the next.
I have maintained this simple incentive program consistently for years (although, I’ll admit I’ve taken a little time off from it recently due to pandemic online teaching and relocating to Michigan). However, I recently came up with a slight improvement to this method that I think will make it EVEN EASIER to maintain.
Continue reading “An Update to my Incentive Program and Prize Box for Piano Students”Just a quick post today!
I just finished updating one of the studio business forms from my Printables page for the 2021-22 school year. It is called the Record of Lesson Attendance & Payment PDF. I do not currently use this form myself anymore, but every year I receive multiple requests from teachers asking if I would please update it for the upcoming school year!
In case you haven’t seen this from before, here is how it works: Write your students’ names in the first column. Each week, write the lesson date (in a month / date format) in the column for that week. This is how you can track attendance. The small circles in each cell are where you can write checkmarks indicating tuition payments. Whether you charge by-the-week or by-the-month, you can place a checkmark by each paid lesson date.
Download it below or on the Printables > Studio Business page.
P.S.: Here is a link to where I explain an alternative system for tracking payments received. But nowadays, I enter everything into a Google Sheet! I explain my system and share the spreadsheet in my online course for piano teachers, Excellence for Piano Teachers. If you’re interested, you can learn more and join the email list to be notified when the next session is offered (usually in January).
Hope you are having a great week, everyone!
About a year ago (August 2020), I wrote a review and giveaway post about Wendy Chan’s wonderful Grand Staff Magnetic Dry-Erase board and a few other of her wonderful teaching resources. Well, today, I’m happy to share an update about her materials and offer a GIVEAWAY (keep reading)!
Wendy’s Grand Staff Magnetic Dry-Erase Board has been such a great resource in my teaching over the past year. I keep it within arm’s reach when I teach and find myself using it on a near-daily basis in my lessons, both online and in-person.
Continue reading “Follow-up Review & Giveaway: Wendy Chan’s Teaching Resources from MusicEscapades.com”
In my last post, I mentioned I am delivering a presentation for NCKP 2021’s Virtual Conference tomorrow. My presentation shares about a personal research project conducting early childhood music (ECM) activities with my daughter throughout her first year of life. It’s been fun and rewarding to see Aria’s musical development up close, and I am learning so much from the process. I have hundreds of videos I’ve been collecting, logging, and analyzing!
I thought it might be fun to share a video of Aria here on my blog, for my readers as well as for any NCKP conference attendees interested in seeing a more recent video clip. The video below was taken a few days ago, with Aria at 17 months old.
The ECM activities I do with Aria are based on Edwin E. Gordon’s Music Learning Theory (MLT). I took a two-week summer certification training Early Childhood Music Level 1 offered through the Gordon Institute for Music Learning (see GIML.org) back in 2017, and have been putting my training to good use since Aria was born in February of 2020. I took the Piano Level 1 certification the summer prior to that, which I blogged about here.
Here is the video, as well as a short description of what you’ll observe in the video.
Continue reading “Early Childhood Music with my 17mo Daughter”Your Cart is Empty
