Making piano lessons fun and engaging!

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 cutter use scissors),  10 ma

  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 covering the "O