Autumn Leaves

Happy Autumn!  I love this season especially the cooler weather.  This week my students will be matching leaves scattered around my studio to leaves that I will hand them.  Yes, that's our dog in the picture chilling out on a Sunday afternoon.
I purchased a few packs of leaves created by Trend® so that I could make many different types of matching games. My students may be matching letter names to white notes, grand staff notes to keyboard locations, or musical terms to their definitions.

                     
I also made a set of melodic/harmonic interval leaves.  I purposely left off the clef signs because I want my students to focus on the intervals rather than the note names.  I love creating games for my kiddos!  They are a great way to to quickly test my students on what they should be studying in between lessons while keeping it fun.  Until next time, piano blogger signing off........................

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Valentine's Day Game: Deal or No Deal!

Image
Hi Everyone!  I decided to share this Valentine's Day game my students are playing this week and next based on the game show "Deal or No Deal". So far my older students are LOVING it!  I tried it out with two of my kindergarteners and they weren't totally getting the gist of it but they did enjoy winning a little prize at the end. As I was roaming through the "Dollar Tree" I noticed that they were selling V'day cards for 50 cents each.  WHAT?!  I bought 20 of them along with 4 red poster boards ( just in case I messed up), some V'day treats and prizes like erasers, pens, a pack of markers, V'day stickers, bubbles, gum, etc..  I didn't know what I was going to do with them at the time but I knew a game would come to me.  Eventually it hit me! I had to look at an episode of "Deal or No Deal" to figure out just how to play the game.  The V'day cards would serve as the suitcases from the show.  Inside each card I wrote some...
Read more

Christmas Piano Game: Life Size Gameboard

Image
  Hi All!  I created a life size board game for my piano students to celebrate the holidays with.  Check out the video below to see how it all came together.     Since I teach one student at a time I had to create tasks and spaces that would make it exciting for a single player game.  You'll notice spaces like the "Five Second Freeze".  They had 15 minutes to get through the entire game so landing on the "Five Second Freeze" space would be just as bothersome as a "lose a turn" space when playing against other people.  My students had to race against time not other players. I used a die I had created for a Valentine's Day Game rather than create a new one for this game.  I say there's nothing wrong with repurposing items wherever possible!  Saves a lot of time.  The die only went up to the number three to give my students the opportunity to earn as many prizes as they could throughout the game (the "Hot Cocoa" spaces)....
Read more

Minute to Win It: Rhythm Sticks

Image
I've said it before but I'll say it again....I LOVE "Pinterest"! I'll look up activities for children unrelated to piano and I'll piano-fy them. I get so many great ideas on that site.   This game came directly from "Pinterest" I simply added onto it and made it my own.   All you need are craft sticks (sold in craft stores), a sharpie, a mug to hold the sticks in, and a timer (sometimes the dollar store sells these). I made up rhythm patterns that fit the levels of my students.  I had beginner sticks with 3/4 and 4/4 time signatures and simple note values like quarter, half, and whole notes.  The more advanced students would clap rhythm sticks with different rest values, eighth notes, dotted quarter notes, etc. The kiddos had one minute to correctly clap as many sticks as they could.  They could clap fast or slow.  I left that up to them.  I would keep track of their scores and at the end of each day I would write down the names of th...
Read more