Easter Activities

As a Christian, as Easter approaches, my focus should be on Christ and what He has done for me on Calvary. My focus is not on chocolate, bunnies, eggs, and the other things that the world traditionally hold to at this time. This time of year is such a spiritually refreshing time for me as I reflect on what Christ has done for me and look forward to living with Him someday.

That being said, do bunnies, chocolate and eggs have any place in our piano studios? This is the thought I have been contemplating this Easter season. I would like to share with you the conclusion I have reached, and invite you to share with me your feelings on this subject.

I feel that my purpose as a piano teacher is primarily to teach piano. Profound statement, ey? :) I also feel that as a Christian piano teacher, I have the responsibility to bring honor and glory to God in everything that I do. So I do not believe that bunnies and eggs should be the focus of this time of year. However, I do not think that using anything with bunnies on it is wrong, either. At Christmastime, I used things with Christmas trees on them, didn't I? So I feel that occasionally using something with bunnies on it or giving out chocolate is not wrong. I mean for real, I'm not going to argue with chocolate. :)

If I was teaching Sunday School, I would not have bunnies in my classroom. The purpose of Sunday School is to point us to Christ, and I believe that is what the focus should be. But as I already said, my purpose in piano lessons is to teach piano, and so I don't think that I need to treat it as if it was a Sunday School class. I'm not picking on Sunday School, mind you, I'm just using that as an example.

So with all that said, I did use one worksheet this week with some of my students that had bunnies and eggs on it. You can find it here on Susan Paradis' site. It was fun and, oh look, it drills notes on the staff, which is exactly what we are working on right now. For my younger students that don't know the notes, I had them write "L" for line or "S" for space. Here is one of my students working on it.

So I would like to know, what is your opinion? I would encourage you all to leave a comment expressing your views on the subject. Let's all just remember to keep our comments sweet and for the purpose of benefiting others, not dragging them down.

Drawing a Grand Staff

I've written some about how I make my own worksheets, and I thought I would expand on that a little more and show you how to draw a grand staff. There was a time that I would have stayed away from making my own worksheets because of the embarrassment of my treble clef signs. :) But with practice, and a knowledge of how to do it, I think that I have gotten much better. (Please tell me I've gotten better!)

So without further ado, here is a Grand tutorial...I mean, a Grand Staff tutorial:

(Contrary to what my voice sounds like on here, I am not 12 years old. Even though I sound like I am. Just wanted to get that straightened out.)

How do you feel about drawing a Grand Staff?

New: Printables!

I am happy to share with you today a couple of printables. I shared with you before about my keyboard worksheet that I made to help my brother learn the fingering for cadence inversions. Yes, you can now download it for yourself! Feel free to use it in whatever way it will help you...it doesn't have to just be for cadences.

Keyboard Worksheet

I also just tried my hand at making a little composing activity for a little beginner. He is 7 years old, and I wanted something that fit in with what he has learned already and it doing in his lesson book. This is what I came up with. I plan to work on it tomorrow at his lesson, so we will see how it works.

Beginner composing activity

Since we know how bad my creativity is, I totally bombed trying to come up with a little rhyme to go along with this rhythm. I plan on having my student decide what he wants his song to be about, and then maybe we can come up with words together. If any of you think of some words to this, please feel free to share them!

I am still experimenting and learning about how to get these so you all can download them, so if any of the links above do not work properly, please let me know!

Ways to Use Resources

In my last post, I talked about how to keep all the very helpful information we get of the internet straight, and how to decide what is best for your own students and studio.

Today I am sharing an example of how to make all of the games, activities, worksheets, etc. work for you in accomplishing your goals. This is just a suggestion, this may not work for you, but it may get some wheels rolling in your mind to help you along your way. At least, I hope it helps you along your way!

Note names and recognition is probably one of the most important things a student learns in their first months of lessons. So because most of my students fall into that category, I decided to take this semester of lessons as "Note Recognition Emphasis Semester." Ok, so I don't really call it that, blech, but we do have this as our emphasis.

My goal is to get all my students in the "One Minute Club", an idea and resource from Susan Paradis. This encourages them to be able to play and say all the notes on the staff in a minute or less. They already were using flashcards, so this just gives them an extra motivation to learn them! All of them have accepted the challenge and are making rapid progress.

So with this as our goal, I plan many note-related games, activities and worksheets to help drill those notes. Let me just tell you, the possibilities are ENDLESS!!! I have had so much fun brainstorming ideas and coming up with activities, or adapting activities to fit what I need. Here are a few resources I have used:

I used this sheet and the Shamrock cards in a variety of ways! Students can draw a card, and then put a small gem on the appropriate note until they fill in all the spots. I also used the cards to have a race against the student down the keyboard. (I believe I read about that activity somewhere, but I don't remember where! If you know, please remind me!) Susan has some suggestions of her own at the bottom of the post, some of those may work for you as well.

I have a large treble staff and a large bass staff that I made when I was in college. I use them again and again! For one activity, I gave the student the bass staff and I took the treble staff. We then rolled one of these dice from Joy that has the music alphabet, and we each tried to fill in our staff first. Bass clef always seems to be harder for the students to learn, so by giving them the bass staff they were able to concentrate on those notes.

Susan Paradis also has these cards with the musical alphabet on them, and these can be used in a variety of ways, as well as the way shown on this post. I have a large grand staff that I drew on a poster board, and these cards work great on that. Here they are again, only bigger!

I also use some timed drills every so often to give the students a bit of a challenge. Here are the drills I use most frequently, (scroll down to "Ready Set Go!" Speed Tests) but I also use these. Some students really like the challenge of getting them all right, and then trying to beat their time on the next line.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what flashcards I use....these ones can not be beat! They are my all time favorite and include many things for the student to drill, not just notes.

Well, there are oodles of possibilities out there! Did you get that picture yet?? :) And this is just in one area of piano! Hopefully this gives you an idea, though, of how to put everything together and make it fit your needs.

What other ways do you incorporate these things into your teaching??

Cadence Chart

My brother is my most advanced piano student. He is 13 and has been taking lessons since he was about 6 years old. He is a great piano player!

Recently we've been working on scales, arpeggios, and cadences in several different keys. Let me just say that I did not know what a arpeggio or cadence was until I went to college. So sometimes I feel very, very inadequate to teach these things to him. Very. Nevertheless, it must be taught, and I enjoy refreshing my own mind with these things as well.

Cadences are difficult, in my opinion. In case you aren't sure what I mean by a cadence, you basically play the I chord, then the IV chord, then the I chord again, then the V7, and back to I. But you play each in a close position. This requires knowing the inversions for each of these chords as well. (Is this making any sense??)

To help with this, I made the following chart for him to try to help figure out the finger positions:

I wasn't sure if this would help...but it did! I think just stopping to figure out each chord and the fingering, and then seeing it visually, helped the most. Once he filled it out, he really didn't need to refer back to it too much. I noticed a DRASTIC difference in his cadences in just one week...and he hadn't even filled out the chords for every key!

So there you have it. Nothing drastic or eye-opening, but something that worked for me this week! If you would like to use this sheet, just leave me your email address and I'll be glad to send it to you!

The First Few Lessons

I started two new, beginning piano students this week, and while I was preparing for their lessons, I thought I may just share with you some of the things I do in the first few lessons.

They say, and rightfully so, that you only have one chance to make a first impression. That is true not only when meeting your students and their parents, but also in the first piano lesson that student ever has. We could re-word the saying for our purposes and say, “A piano student can only have one first lesson, and that first lesson could determine how they view piano for the rest of their lives.” So yeah, that first lesson is very important.

I talked here about the student/parent interview I have with each of my new students. I prefer for this to be separate from the first “real” lesson. This gives the student time to get to know me, and gives me an opportunity to observe him and answer any questions from him or his parent. Sometimes I begin a few introductory things with the student. It just depends on the situation, the method book he is using, etc.

So, depending on those factors, I use some combination of the following in the first few lessons:

Pre-reading songs. Susan Paradis has several of these. In some method books, the students does not have any songs to play for the first couple of lessons. I don’t like to overwhelm the student, so I generally go over a couple of pages of introductory material (Posture, hand position, highs and lows on the keyboard, black keys and white keys, finger numbers, etc.) and then give a couple of these pre-reading sheets. Susan has several of these in different levels...some that say the note name, some with just the finger numbers...so you can easily find one that fits your exact need.

Activity Papers. (Not to be confused with worksheets, mind you) For young beginners, I use this one reviewing Left and Right hands, and this one, reviewing the finger numbers. These seem to be very effective. I also use this one as soon as they learn the quarter, half and whole note so they can begin to learn to draw them. This activity is great for enforcing which note is which. For older beginners, I use mostly the little worksheets that I put together. I have not yet been able to find much along these lines for adult beginners, because they comprehend and learn at a faster pace. Do you know of any for adults???

Practice Charts. I usually use these ones from Making Music Fun. Generally adults don’t need them, but kids seem to love them! My sisters have used every one of these, and still beg to use them over again. They seem to love the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction of being able to put a sticker on the chart at the end of a day’s practice. I think I can understand that. These have such simple but attractive graphics on them.

These are the ones I have found myself going back to for each new student. I know there are more options out there, but this is what has worked for me so far. What do you use in the first few lessons? What concepts do you teach in that first lesson? Leave us some feedback!

Making Your Own Worksheets

We’ve talked here about where to find some good worksheets, and we talked here about how to use worksheets and when to use them. Today I’d like to talk about how to make your own!

I often make worksheets that specifically fit a need for one of my students. It seems like I had a hard time finding simple worksheets for my beginning students. Each method book introduces different concepts in different orders, and it was hard to find worksheets that were drilling rhythm, but didn’t use dotted quarter notes, just for instance.

So here are a few of the ways I made my own worksheets.

Plain old staff paper and a pencil. These things can do wonders. I found an amazing site where you can make your own staff paper to fit your exact need. So when I wanted really large treble clef paper, I could just make my own. Its so easy, and so convenient. With plain old staff paper and a pencil we can review note names, intervals, learn to draw notes and clef signs, etc, etc, etc.

Keyboard worksheets. I googled “keyboard picture” and came up with the picture here.

I have used it for so many things! I made a whole sheet with several of these on it that I use to talk about major scales, chords, and such things. I have used them with beginners to talk about whole and half steps. I also took and put little white boxes on the black keys so that we could mark on those too. That looks like this:

I also made a simple beginner worksheet with instructions for them to circle the groups of two black keys and then the groups of three black keys. We can number the keys, name the notes, and a whole host of other things!

Here are pictures of some of the worksheets I have made:

I will tell you a little secret...I make most of these in Pages. (An Apple program that would be like Microsoft Word.) Wow, aren’t I techy??? But because I just keep things simple, it works well for me most of the time. I really think simple is key, you don’t want a student overwhelmed and feeling like they are taking a test. You just want to review or enforce a concept. So I keep it simple for the student and simple for me, and use Pages. And no one will ever know! Well, except for you, now you know. I guess I don’t mind if you know.

What worksheets do you use? Do you have some tried and true ones that I don’t know about yet? Please share! And if you would like to use or see any of the ones I have mentioned above, just leave me a comment with your e-mail address and I will be happy to send them to you.

Worksheets: Who Needs Them?

Last week I talked briefly about worksheets and gave you some resources for some great ones to use in your studio. Today I’d like to talk about actually using them with your students.

(Please be aware that all opinions in this post about worksheets are completely and totally my own. You may have your own opinion. I give you permission. You may also have a different opinion than mine. I give you permission for that, too. And I also give you permission to leave a comment below and share your opinion with me, because I love to hear opinions! From opinionated people. Moving on...)

I use worksheets quite frequently with my students. I used to think that every student needed a worksheet for every new concept they learned. I don’t overload them like that any more, but there are some I still like to use. Why?

I think that worksheets are a great way to enforce a concept. Heres an example: a beginning student is learning the quarter note. His teacher says to him, “This note with a "dirty face" is a quarter note. Now you must remember that 168 hours from now when you come to your next lesson and I ask you which note has a dirty face. Got it?”

No, he doesn’t got it. (Excuse the grammar.) Because this student is a he, said student learns things much more concretely if he is allowed to do, not just listen. So instead, his teacher gives him a simple worksheet asking him to draw 5 quarter notes. When he goes home, this students gets to leave the piano (walking=action=way more interesting and a change of pace) and draw (more action). While drawing, he has “quarter note” on the brain. (He actually might have fire engines or trash trucks on the brain, but lets hope for the best.) This is cementing the name of the note in his mind. Plus, he is coloring in each note head, re-enforcing the fact that this note has a “dirty face.” And an added bonus is that he is learning how to draw notes, which may come in very handy when he begins composing his own songs in like two decades (ok, it seems like it).

Is this reasoning only for those students called “him?” No, girls appreciate these things too. They just have Cinderella and lip gloss on the brain, thats all. No matter what the gender or age, students learn things better when they use more than one of their senses (touch) to learn how to play.

There are some instances when I don’t use worksheets. If the student is working through a theory or activity book, chances are they don’t need much more than that. If their theory book has them labeling all the C’s on the staff, then I don’t need to give them a worksheet that will repeat that activity. However, if a student is having a hard time remembering the Bass Clef notes in the middle C position, then I may give them a sheet that reviews those notes. Or maybe this student hasn’t reviewed their intervals lately, and I want to soon introduce minor scales. Out comes an interval worksheet!

There have also been times when I have printed off a particular sheet for a student’s lesson, but then during the lesson decide not to give it to them. Either I feel they don’t need the review on that particular skill, or I feel they have enough for one week, and I don’t want to overwhelm them. It just depends. As the teacher, I must have my eyes and ears open to what will be best for my student right now. None of my students were made by a cookie cutter, they all are different people with different learning strengths and weaknesses and need different teaching approaches. (Whew...that makes my job sound like hard work!)

So what is your opinion? Worksheets or no worksheets? Please, do share! Because I love opinions...

Worksheets

I'm going to write a few posts in the next little bit about worksheets...where to get them, how to use them, and how to make some of your own!

"Worksheet" sounds so formal and....boring. Doesn't it? Maybe we should call them "funsheets" or "activity papers" instead. :) Because worksheets/funsheets/activity papers can be fun! We'll learn in a future post just how fun.

For now, here are some links to some worksheets/funsheets/activity papers (oh for pete's sake) that I have used and enjoyed.

Here are a bunch of fun ones from Making Music Fun. They do make music fun! I use the note recognition timed drills the most often, but there are other great ones offered here. They also have some other resources, such as sticker practice charts, sheet music and composer studies. And they all have fun, ocean-themed graphics. Perfect for the area I live!

I just recently purchased and started using this rhythm workbook from Jen's Piano Studio. It is a workbook that is 100% reproducible. Not only are there some worksheets to be filled out, but other great hands on activities...and we LOVE activities!

Here are some great sightreading worksheets from Music Matters Blog. I haven't actually used these yet, but I am planning on using them SOON!

Stay tuned for some more posts about worksheets! Until then, I'd love to hear from you! What do you use for your teaching? What great worksheet/funsheet/activity papers are out there that I don't know about?? Let me know!

Christmas Games

In my first post, I talked briefly about playing games at lessons. How many of you never knew you could play games in your piano lessons? (Raise hands)

Well, to make things so much easier on us piano teachers, there are some great people out there who make up these worksheets games for us to use. Bless them.

Susan Paradis just posted all her holiday games and worksheets (but we'll call them games) in one convenient post for us to pick what we want to use from them. Love it. And I also love how she has snow falling all over this post. (How did she do that??)

Jennifer Fink over at Jen's Piano Studio Blog also is beginning to post some Christmas activities (maybe thats a better word). Here is one she just posted about. I believe I failed to mention this resource in my last post about christmas music, but Jen also has some great Christmas stuff for us to use. You can browse her blog and website to find other creative things she's posted in the past.

Stay tuned for some more updates on Christmas music and activities to use in your lessons!