Making piano lessons fun and engaging!

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.........

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 some...

Hi Everyone!  Continuing on with how I teach time signature to my students (especially my younger ones), I'm going to share how I teach what the bottom number of the time signature represents.  When I first started teaching piano about 10 years ago (after I taught in the public school system for 10 years as an elementary school teacher)  I have to be honest and say I dreaded teaching the bottom number of time signature to my students because they just wouldn't get it no matter how many fraction examples I gave them. Then I decided to approach the bottom number from a different angle; one that my younger students especially could understand.  First I show my students a paper circle and ask them what shape it is.  Then I show them a laminated circle made from card stock outlined in black representing a whole note (upper left hand corner pic if you're looking at the web version of this blog).  I say, "A whole circle represents a whole note".  T...

Hello!  Wow, what a month this has been so far.  My kiddos had an awesome spring recital, we visited New York (which I absolutely LOVED), and my son graduated from high school!  Things are finally starting to settle down but the summer months tend to go at a more relaxed pace than the rest of the year, don't you think?  I hope that you have amazing things planned for the next few months; picnics, pool outings, concerts in the park, hikes, etc. Okay, so I have decided to do a series on how I teach time signature to my students, especially my younger ones.  I'm not sure yet just how many parts there will be to this so I'm adding "Part 1, Part 2,....." so I can easily refer back to certain entries if needed. The first thing I do when introducing time signature is I have my students look at the numbers stacked above and below each other at the very beginning of their songs.  I share with them that this is a HUGE concept in music.  That it's th...

Hi Folks!  As promised I'm giving an update on the Twisted "Twister" piano game my sibling students played this past week.  If you'd like more details on how I made this work for piano lessons, please read the post "Twisted Twister" prior to this one.  That's Mabry and Chase in the photo above! With the feedback I got from my students these are the improvements I made: -I enlarged the pieces so that they could see them better -I went back to using the "Twister" spinner but simply helped it along if it ended up landing on the same body part too many times in a row -Instead of checking items off of a sheet, I simply called items out from the mat.  This made everything SO much easier.  I'd spin the spinner, call out the body part and color, and simply looked at the terms I adhered to the mat for that color, and called out one of the terms. -I set the timer for about 6 minutes.  Ten minutes seemed to take too long.  Six to Seven minutes ...

Before I jump into the game I have to brag on my child a little!  My son is graduating high school with honors; summa cum laude!  We just attended the ceremony and it was incredible.  Who knew that my crazy kid who used to scream off the top of his lungs in supermarkets and try to run away from me in department stores would grow up to be such a responsible, talented, super smart young man.  I'm so proud of him!  What a tough year it's been for me, though, as a mom knowing that my chickadee is ready to leave the nest......sniffle.  I'm grateful, though, that he chose to attend college in state! Okay, this week my sibling students will be playing "Twister" with a twist.  I adhered musical terms, notes, and Melodic/Harmonic Intervals to the mat with velcro dots; two items per circle.  By adhering two items per circle I can accommodate each sibling's level of instruction.  I then typed out the terms for each color to keep track ...

My younger kiddos up to the 3rd grade absolutely loved playing this game!  Both boys and girls enjoyed it.  I bought this rug from Amazon with a gift card I received from one of my piano parents.  I find that the more 3-dimensional the games are, the more excited my kiddos are to play them.  The games keep terms, techniques, and notes fresh in their minds but in a fun way.  Their enthusiasm to come to their lessons is what inspires me! I already had toy cars in my studio and velcro dots.  I always have a huge supply of velcro dots.  The dots allow me to change out game pieces quickly between lessons based on whatever terms/notes my students are learning.  I made this game two-fold for students who either knew their white notes or staff notes. If the kiddos were learning about white note letter names then their parking lot was a simple modified keyboard (I just drew this).  The cars were parked on certain keys.  I'd call out a le...