Teaching Tempo Marks: Snow Ball "Fight"

 Happy Holidays everyone!  I hope that you are having a wonderful time with family and friends.   I received some pretty awesome gifts for Christmas this year including a few items that I'll be incorporating into my future lessons so stay tuned for some wacky ideas, games, and activities in the new year!  Are a few of your students having a little difficulty remembering the meanings of different tempo marks such as Adagio, Allegro, and Andante?  Throwing "snowballs" at varying tempos really helps my students remember which is which.  It's especially easy to get the "A" words mixed up when first learning them so I thought up this idea of  us throwing "snowballs" at each other based on which tempo mark I call out.  It's a great way to help teach and reinforce the different tempo marks. This is the perfect time of year to have an indoor "snowball fight' with your students using small styrofoam balls (about 2-21/2" in diameter) and a shield (the lid of a plastic storage container).  You can find styrofoam balls at any craft store and they are fairly inexpensive.  You may even get lucky and find them at your local dollar store.  It doesn't matter what age they are, all of my students LOVE doing this activity.   We each get a shield  and 6-8 styrofoam balls. I situate my fort a few feet away from my student's and we hunker down behind our sheids with our "snowballs".  During the first few rounds I velcro a piece of laminated card stock with the tempo mark we are working on to
 the outside of my shield so that my students are associating the action with the word.  Then I remove the words from my shield and simply call out the different marks.  When I say "Allegro" we throw the balls at each other fast.  When I call "Adagio" we throw the balls slow. You get the idea.  In between the different speeds I'll say "freeze" so that we can gather up our snowballs for the next round.  When our "fight" is done we go over the tempo marks and their meanings one last time.  It only takes a few minutes of your lesson to do this activity and it is super effective.  We also use a play on words such as "Andante went walking" or we say Adagio extremely slow like A----da-----gi-----o--------- to signify it's speed and for the word Allegro we say that if we grew extra legs (Allegro-grow legs) we'd be able to run faster.  Moderato is the easiet of the four to remember since the italian and english words are similar.  Well, that's it for now.  I'll see you in the new year!  Piano blogger signing off........

Note ID game: "Note Rollers"

 Wow!  My students rocked the house last Friday night at their winter recital.  They did such a wonderful job.  I couldn't be more proud of them!  Now, on to more note ID games......I created this game "Note Rollers" close to 5 years ago.  It's a great game to reinforce quick note identification.  I bought a table top rubber piano from Toys R Us ® a few Christmas's ago and it has been such an asset to my piano program.  My students get a kick out of this flat rubber piano.  They think it's the coolest thing ever.  I use it for quite a few activities.  If you are interested in purchasing one of these, I'd suggest looking for sales now around the holidays.  I bought mine for half off the original price (about $13.00).  I wouldn't roll it up as they suggest since it actually damages the keys.  Keep it flat at all times.  I bought a few foam dice from a local teacher store (although I've seen them in craft stores as well) and adhered staff notes on each face of the dice using packing tape.  The great thing about this game is that it too grows with your students.  They could start out by simply locating letter names A-G on the piano and progress to simple staff notes all the way to ledger line notes as well as sharped and flatted notes.  What they're supposed to do is roll the dice (either 2 or 3 of them) and play what they've rolled on the rubber piano.  I have them read the dice from left to right so that I can keep track of the notes played.  Then they roll again and again until time is called.  They need to correctly locate at least 20 staff notes within 2 minutes and 10 letter name notes in one minute in order to win the game.  This is also a great way to assess what notes your kiddos are having difficulty with.  It is quite possible that while the students are rolling the dice they come up with the same note a couple of times during the game and that's fine with me.  I still count it as a point.  Until next time, piano blogger signing off.......