American Piano Warrior: Obstacle Course Piano Game!

 

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 that matters to me that could potentially inspire other piano teachers to think outside of the box without worrying about getting it perfect.  So, I apologize in advance for my mismatched tenses. 😊 Back to the blog.........

I created 3 obstacles: a matrix, tunnel, and balance beam.  In order to complete an obstacle they have to answer piano related questions.  The older students start out with 40 points and the younger with 20 points.  The younger students will only be going through the tunnel and walking the balance beam. If they answer all of the piano questions correctly and get through the obstacles without stepping off the balance beam, making squeakers squeak, bumping into tissue paper orbs, or touching the pieces of yarn, then they remain with the same amount of points in the end.  That's the goal!

                                The Matrix

I wanted to make the matrix extra challenging so I taped dog squeakers (a pack of 20 for $8.00 on Amazon) all over the floor where I wanted the matrix to go.  Let me tell you! My dog, Cody was VERY confused! He would look at the squeakers on the floor, paw at them, and try to bite them to get them to squeak! His canine brain could not make sense of it.  It was truly a funny sight to see.

I tied single pieces of yarn onto pushpins and pushed them into the drywall from one wall to the other creating a zig zag pattern starting from the windows and stopping where the shelves ended like the picture above.  Yes! You heard me right.  I pushed pushpins into the drywall.  There are quite a few pin holes on my walls in the studio and I am totally fine with it.  Whenever I decide to turn the studio back into a front room, a little spackling and paint job will do the trick! See the table in the picture above? That's what my students have to get to.

On the table are envelopes.  They have to grab the one with their name on it (I only put out the number of envelopes needed for the day) and go back through the matrix without touching the pieces of yarn or stepping on the squeakers.  The last student of the day has the task of placing the envelopes on the table for the students going through the next day. 

Once they get back to "safety" they open the envelope and must name the musical terms on the index card.  They hand the cards to me so that I can reuse them.  Here's an example below:

For every term they can't answer a point gets knocked off of their total.  Then it's time to go through the tunnel!

The Tunnel

This tunnel was almost entirely created from materials from the "Dollar Tree".  I used pool noodles for the frame and hung tissue paper orbs from them to serve as hanging obstacles.

I used LOTS of masking tape to secure the noodles to the floor!  Then I covered the frame with plastic table covers and taped more dog squeakers onto the floor.

I reinforced the frame by tying yarn from the frame up to the ceiling with push pins.  Yep! I have pin holes on my ceiling as well. 

I cut up a table cover into pieces and covered the base of the noodles with them and secured the pieces with clear tape to make it look nicer.  Once they get through the tunnel it's time to clap and count through some rhythms like this example below.

After they complete the ryhthms it's time to move onto the balance beam. 

The Balance Beam

This was the easiest of the 3 obstacles to create.  I just bought a 2x4 piece of wood from the "Home Depot", wrapped it in blue painter's tape, and secured it to the floor with clear packing tape.  The goal is to walk the beam without stepping off of it.  My younger students just had to walk forward on it but my older kids had to walk forward and backwards! That was a challenge for them! After walking the beam they were ready to complete the final piano task.  

I stuck these papers on the side of one of my shelves in the studio and had my students complete one of them based on their level of instruction.

By picking the answers that correctly corresponded with the examples on the top half of the paper they would then use the numbers in red to open up the combination box.

If they picked the correct answer the box would unlock and open up to reveal prizes.  I allowed them to pick 2 out of the 3 prizes I placed in the box.

They had a total of 10 minutes to get through the entire course which was PLENTY of time. 

You may be wondering why I sometimes spend so much time and energy creating these elaborate games for my students?  This is what makes me the happiest!  I'm a theory based piano teacher whose goal is to make learning theory easy to understand and fun.  What's the point of playing a piece of music if you don't understand what you're playing?

Also, our kiddos have gone through, are going through, and have witnessed a lot from Covid to school shootings to natural disasters.  If I can create a magical experience for them once a week where they get to be themselves, have their voices heard and respected, and be able to forget about their worries even if it's just for a few minutes a week then I have done what I sought out to do!

Here's a video of this obstacle course:

I'll tell you this!  My students know their theory and it's because of the games that they retain the information.  Competing to get their name on the score board is an incredible motivator for them but I don't always use a score board.  Most of the time my students study on a regular basis simply because they enjoy aceing their games.  They end up studying everything in their binder because they have no idea what I'm actually going to test them on. 😉

I am currently teaching some students whose parents are band directors and music educators in the community.  They often tell me that my piano students who they end up getting as middle school and high school marching band/orchestra students are some of the best students they have!  Woohoo! 

I love teaching in this weird, outside the box, crazy way! It makes me happy and more importantly it makes my students happy!

If you ended up on this blogsite that tells me that you too are looking for a different way to teach piano! Welcome!

Piano blogger signing off.....