Candy Cane Hunting and Sorting Game

 Happy Holidays everyone!  Here's a super inexpensive and quick game to put together for the holiday season.  Grab packs of plastic candy canes and 3 festive mugs from your local Dollar Store, copy 4 keyboards onto plain paper, use small mulit-colored dot stickers to locate particular notes on the keyboards,

 copy blank grand staves onto adhesive labels, draw staff notes that match the colored dots from the keyboards, adhere the notes to the candy canes, hide them around your studio, have your students hunt for the candy canes, and place them in the correct holiday mugs corresponding to the location of the colored dots on the keyboards, and you've got yourself a candy cane hunting and sorting game.

Until next time, piano blogger signing off.........

Musical Maze Runner

Well, if a picture's worth a thousand words then a video is worth that much more,right?!  Click on the link below to take a tour through the maze!  If you have any specific questions about the game please leave your comments below.  I would love to hear from you.  Happy Halloween!

https://youtu.be/qEIJjy9TeWY

Piano blogger signing off.........

Valentine's Day Game: Deal or No Deal!

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 something that my students could potentially win like a marker, sticker, an eraser, marble, piece of candy, etc.  I also wrote a few duds like a paper clip, piece of paper, etc.

 I laminated everything so that it would last a long time.  Most everything I've laminated has lasted for more than 10 years!  I used velcro dots to keep the cards closed and to make it easy for me to reset the game between lessons.  I found that the "Scotch" brand dots are the best.  They stick really well and last a super long time!

I created a 5x4 grid, numbered the rows and adhered little plastic hooks underneath the numbers for the cards to hang from.  I didn't want to number the cards themselves because I wanted to be able to shuffle the cards and place them anywhere on the poster board so that each time a student played the cards would be in different spots.  More exciting that way!

Just like in the game the children would pick a card at the beginning and I would place it to the side till the end of the game.  I created a list of items that were written on each card so that the kiddos could keep track of what was left as I crossed things off the list.

In order for them to pick a card they'd have to complete piano tasks like identifying a musical term, locating a staff note on my rubber piano (or you could use a paper piano and a marker of some sort), identifying intervals, playing scales, etc.  The beauty of this game is that it can be used with any subject!

 You can decide what questions you want your kiddos to answer!  So they answer a question correctly and they get to pick a numbered card.  I open the card, they hope for something that they don't want.  I cross that item off the list and the game goes on.  At some point, I get a "phone call" from a composer.  I pretend to have a short conversation with say, Beethoven, about him wanting to "buy" the card that the student picked at the very beginning of the game.  I tell the students that Beethoven has offered them 2 Hershey's Kisses ( or whatever you'd like the offer to be) for their card...."DEAL OR NO DEAL?"  The student must then decide if the offer is better than what's left on the list that they could potentially win.  I purposely made the first offer not all that appealing because of course, I want my students to continue playing.  The game continues, the kiddos answer a question, pick a card, a few cards later I get another phone call from a different composer offering a better deal.  You get the gist!  I put a timer on for 10 minutes.  Most students  have been able to complete the game in that time.  If a child hasn't made any deals by the end of game, I leave one card on the board and give them the option of either choosing the card from the board or the card they picked at the very beginning of the game.  As I shared, my older students, 2nd grade and up, are LOVING this game!



Until next time, piano blogger signing off....................................................................