Making piano lessons fun and engaging!

  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)....

  Glockenspiel Hi All! I like to add other mediums to my piano program that make the lessons even more fun and engaging for my kiddos! See this glockenspiel? I have my beginner students play their Middle C and C Position songs on it.  Now we don't use the mallets as they are traditionally intended to be used and I let them know this before they begin playing.  I use this instrument for the purpose of reinforcing piano concepts.  I have my students use their right hand mallet to play treble clef notes and their left hand mallet to play bass clef notes.  This is so good for reinforcing things like note identification and location, being aware of which hand to use based on the clef sign, the dynamics, and the direction in which the notes go (either up or down). They LOVE using different musical mediums to play their songs but there's so much more you can do with them. How about having your students play their songs or parts of their lesson songs in this flat tablet...

Happy October!  This week my kiddos will be drawing musical terms in sand.  This game is super easy to set up.  Purchase some colored sand, fabric leaves, adhesive hooks, a box, and some pines cones (optional), plus something for them to draw in the sand with. Fill the bottom of the box with colored sand and add a few pine cones and fabric leaves to the sand for decoration like the picture above.  On the inside of the box lid adhere 5 hooks like the picture below.  Make sure to make space at the bottom of the lid for you to be able to tuck part of the lid under the bottom of the box so that it can serve as your display for the leaves you'll be testing your kiddos on.   Draw a musical term on each fabric leaf with a thin tipped permanent marker.  Make sure to put a piece of paper or card stock beneath the leaves so the ink doesn't seep through onto the surface you are drawing or writing on.  I test no more than 10 musical terms.  Once the...

This is a nice quick game where students match terms or in the case from the picture below, grand staff notes to keys by hooking them onto magnetic hooks adhered to a magnetic wipe off board.  The board I used is higher up on one of the walls in my studio so to add extra fun to this activity I had my kiddos stand on a step ladder to reach the board.  We're not talking WAY high up on the wall, just a few feet from the floor.  I set up a very sturdy 2-step step ladders. Oh my gosh, did they enjoy that!  They loved playing this game from a height.  I stood on the floor right behind them as an added safety measure. There was one student who didn't want to step onto the ladder so I simply pulled the pieces farther down on the board closer to them so they could reach the hooks while they stood on the floor. The materials I used were  cardstock, a  thin tipped black marker (to draw in the sharps and flats), a  paper cutter (if you don't have a paper c...

  Hi All!  Today I'm going to share how I Piano-fy existing games.  Do you remember playing "Old Maid" as a child?  I do.  What a nail biter that game was, not wanting to be stuck with the "Old Maid Card"!   I found these decks at a local store where I live called "Five Below" for $1.00 each.   Woohoo!  I purchased 8 decks to create many levels of games for my students. I tend to get right to the point with my blogs, so you'll rarely have to read through paragraph upon paragraph about my life and stuff.  So, let's get to it! I took a card from a deck checking the size to make sure that the pieces I cut from 8x11 white shipping labels (you know, the sticky adhesive printer paper labels that you print addresses onto and adhere to boxes that you mail to people) would fit the cards, cut the pieces out, peeled the wax paper off, and adhered them onto the inside of the cards.  I left the outside of the cards intact as well as not cov...

  Easter is right around the corner and here's the game I thought up for my kiddos. I'll be launching the game tomorrow (March 22nd).  I hope it goes well! 🤞 I call it the Easter Egg True/False Cup Game.  I found adhesive bunnies from the "Dollar Tree" and stuck them to the front of these plastic cups that I turned upside down (see the picture above). I splurged on colorful spring time cups but plain white ones would do just fine.  I purchased the yellow plastic table cover from the "Dollar Tree" as well.   Then I sectioned off the cups into a grid simply by drawing it directly on the table cover.  I numbered the sections as well as the cups (see picture below), and placed a plastic Easter egg in either the "true" cup or the "false" cup for each pair by adhering the egg to the inside of the cup with a glue gun.  You could probably just tape the eggs to the inside of the cups.   I then created game sheets for my students based on their p...