Making piano lessons fun and engaging!: Matching Pumpkins to Scarecrows

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Matching Pumpkins to Scarecrows

WOW! It's been a while since I've blogged. I just had to share this game I'm having my students play this week.

I like getting the kiddos outdoors every once in a while to take teaching beyond the four walls of my studio. Since we're in the middle of our fall season I wanted to create an outdoor matching game where my students would match pumpkins to scarecrows. I feel the best way to keep musical terms and note identification fresh in my
students' minds is to constantly quiz them with games.

I got this idea as I was wandering the aisles of a local fabric store and spotted these amazing scarecrows.....DING! The idea had been planted. I then thought, "wouldn't it be cool if I could buy 10 ornamental (fake) pumpkins and have the kiddos run around my front yard matching pumpkins to scarecrows?"

I kept visiting the fabric store until the scarecrows were discounted as far as they were going to go (70% off......woohoooo!). Finding inexpensive pumpkins proved to be a bit of a challenge but I finally found some.

I put velcro dots on the sleeves of the scarecrows and on every pumpkin and used velcroed game pieces from another one of my games to set it up.

On either sleeve of each scarecrow is a picture of some musical term such as "mf" and on each pumpkin is a definition that matches the pictures on the scarecrows' sleeves. My students have up to 5 minutes to lay the pumpkins down next to the matching scarecrows. The smile on their faces has made all the preparation worth it!

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