Making piano lessons fun and engaging!

 

  Where I live, school has started today and I don't know about your students, but most of mine are not looking forward to going back to "work".  I spent the last week (during my staycation) creating this obstacle course for them.  I wanted to make their piano lesson extra special this week! I hope it goes as well in real life as I have been imagining it to go in my head. Lol! Update : it is going extremely well! Phew! The students who came today 8/14/23 (their ages ranging from 7-15 years) loved it. Their smiles and giggles made it all worth it. Yay! Side note: Do any of you struggle with grammar? In particular, when to use the present tense and past tense? I struggle with this every time I write something!  It makes me want to avoid putting myself out there altogether for fear of being judged but reading Brené Brown's books have helped me greatly.  Judgers will always judge.  It's up to me to step into "the arena" as Brown puts it and share something t...

Hello All! This week and next my students' metronome activity will be throwing velcro balls at a  target to different rhythm patterns like the one from the picture above.  I laminated the rhythm sheets, adhered two pieces of scotch tape on the inside of my front door before adding a  velcro dot to it for easy removal, added a velcro dot to the backs of the rhythm sheets to stick on the door, and mounted the target onto a  damage free hook . Step 1: I had my students clap and count their rhythm pattern out loud.  Step 2: They repeated step one with a metronome beat.  Step 3 : They grabbed the number of balls needed to throw at the target while counting out loud keeping in time with the metronome.   I told them to stay focused on the rhythm while throwing the velcro balls and not to get distracted if some of the balls didn't stick.  As long as they completed to pattern the balls that actually stuck to the target would count towards their ov...