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........
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........
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