1. The Mediterranean Sea is so bella and pacifico this time of year.
2. If you ritardando in the streets of Naples you might get run over!
3. The street performers in Rome are allegro and full of giocoso.
4. Gelato is a dolce way to fine a meal.
5. If that luggage is troppo pesante, just fermata and we will have someone else carry it for you.
6. We are dolente that our trip will presto be over.
7. I would like a poco piu cheese on my pizza.
8. Please accelerando so that we get to da capo of the bus line in time to catch a ride.
9. The sound of the train is crescendo.
10. The people of Italy are assai friendly.
11. It’s sempre exciting to travel to new places.
12. See if you can find loco to stay for meno than €100 a night.
13. Let’s sit by the fuoco and sip a mezzo cup of coffee largo.
14. The dancers in the ballet moved around so leggiero and grazioso.

And for your convenience, here’s a handy list of the same messages with the Italian terms translated into English. Of course, these are not necessarily the Italian words you would actually use in that context; I just tried to stick with ones that my students would be somewhat familiar with from their music studies.

1. The Mediterranean Sea is so beautiful and peaceful this time of year.
2. If you gradually get slower in the streets of Naples you might get run over!
3. The street performers in Rome are fast and lively and full of humor.
4. Gelato is a sweet way to end a meal.
5. If that luggage is too heavy, just stop and we will have someone else carry it for you.
6. We are sorrowful that our trip will quickly be over.
7. I would like a little morecheese on my pizza.
8. Please gradually get faster so that we get to the beginning of the bus line in time to catch a ride.
9. The sound of the train is gradually getting louder.
10. The people of Italy are very friendly.
11. It’s always exciting to travel to new places.
12. See if you can find a place to stay for less than €100 a night.
13. Let’s sit by the fireand sip a medium cup of coffee slowly.
14. The dancers in the ballet moved around so lightlyand gracefully.

Activities for the group class included:
Mixed Messages – students had to translate Italian musical terms to complete English sentences. The winning team members each won a Free Travel Pass!

Board Patrol – as each student performed, the others were placed in pairs and given a board labeled with one of the following: Dynamics Board, Tempo Board, Articulation Board, and Mood Board. They had to listen and write on the board as many elements as they could come up with that they heard in the performance.

Key Signature Lesson and Scramble – Thanks to the Teach Piano Today blog for the inspiration for this activity!

[Find the full explanation of the Rhythm Chart game we played in the 5 for Fun! book of games and activities for the private piano lesson.]

This is a much-loved game in my studio! It’s one of the first ones I made and students don’t mind a bit that it’s all constructed of simple, homemade materials.

Here’s a close-up of the treble clef game. The treble clef shape is cut out of white posterboard and orange and blue circles are placed on the treble clef to create a path. Then I laminated it to preserve it. To play, each student places their game token on the first circle and draws a card from the draw pile. If they answer the card correctly, they get to roll the die and advance their game piece.

The dice are made from foam cubes and then I used a black ink pen to draw a keyboard or staff with a different interval on each side. The student rolls the die that corresponds to the color space he is on on the treble clef board. He must identify the interval and then move the equivalent number of spaces (i.e. 4th – move 4 spaces).

Here are a few specific ideas for pre-reading students:
* pictures of a piano keyboard with an “X” to identify the name of the key
* simple rhythm patterns
* note values
* basic dynamics
* pictures of instruments to identify

Here’s a close-up of the simple note identification questions that are included in the deck. For students just getting into reading notes on the staff, you could make cards with all the staff notes and just include a specified range of those in addition to other easier cards. Or you could make it multiple choice. Another fun approach might be to do a series of notes and have the student see if she can identify the word that is spelled. (Click here for a list of Musical Alphabet Words.)

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

An Italian Intrigue: Musical Adventures in Heart, Mind, and Strength

Last month I had the amazing experience of spending three weeks in Italy! I decided to do double duty and use the trip to do reconnaissance work for this year’s theme. It was a ton of fun and now I’m excited to take my students along with me for a journey through the country! Along the way they’ll be racking up Complication Coins, trying to identify the hideout of the Mystery Musician, traveling covertly at times to get double earnings, completing Italian language lessons, and  learning to play the piano beautifully, excellently, and naturally.

I made the official announcement at the September Surprise! last Thursday. To start off the event I gave each student a strip of paper with several measures from a familiar tune. They had to try to find all the other students who had excerpts from the same tune. Once they all found each other they laid out the measures in order and then did something to get my attention. After all the groups were formed each one took a turn humming, whistling, or otherwise vocalizing their tune for the rest of us and then telling us what the name of it was.

After a round of students played their prepared “surprise” selections, I had the groups from the introductory activity re-form and spend time working together to come up with a musical way of playing their pieces. Every member of the group had to be involved in some musical capacity in the performance. I had a box of rhythm instruments and a xylophone available for them to use in addition to the piano. This group did a lovely job with their rendition of “Ode to Joy.”

“Jesus Loves Me” was the perfect selection for this group that included quite a few young and/or beginning students. I was really impressed at how well they all kept the beat together on their instruments!

Whistling, playing piano, and a few rhythm instruments made “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons sound great!

This group ended up being all girls. They had the tune “Greensleeves” and did a beautiful job playing and singing it together – harmony and all!

The evening was a great reunion after our month off and we’re all super excited about the year ahead!

I decided to start with the Froggy Interval Hop. I love trying to incorporate as many different learning styles as possible into each activity, so I dusted off my large foam board keyboard that I made years ago and pulled a little stuffed monkey from my collection of mini stuffed animals. I didn’t have a frog, so the activity became Monkey Interval Hop for us! I also found a cute little monkey graphic on-line and printed off an octave’s worth of little monkey cards. After putting a little bit of sticky tack on the back of each monkey card, we were ready to go!

I sat at the piano and played the song while singing along and placing the monkey cards on the corresponding number of notes to represent the interval. My little student got to hold the stuffed monkey and sing along while hopping on the first and last monkey to represent the interval we were singing. For example, when we sang, “Hop, hop, hop, hop, three little monkeys hop,” she hopped like this: C-E-C-E-C-E-C-E.

We’ve only done it a couple weeks so far, but there are a ton of possibilities for using this simple, but creative song to help young students train their ears. Here are a few that I’ve thought of:

• Include intervals all the way up to an octave.
• Instead of always going in order, place the monkey cards on random notes to have the student develop an even better awareness of the different intervals.
• Transpose to other major keys to develop familiarity with different scales.
• Try using minor keys to develop tonal awareness.
• The teacher plays and sings the first interval and the student tries to correctly identify it by placing the monkey card on the correct piano keys.
• Use all sorts of different animals just for fun!

In addition to using this during private lessons, I think it would be a really great activity for a small group of young students – perhaps a perfect addition to a pre-piano camp! Those are a few of my ideas thus far. Can you think of other creative ways to use this activity to help students develop a well-trained ear?

One never knows what they will find when linking around on-line. This week’s exciting find is the Theta Music Trainer website, which features a nice collection of fun and engaging music games. I just got done with a round of Paddle Pitch and am happy to report that I passed level one.

By signing up for a free account you can track your training and progress, and access many of the games. Paid subscriptions look very reasonable, with special discounts available for music teachers. There is even a 30-day basic ear training course that walks the participant through a specific “workout” that is designed to take 15-20 minutes each day. This appears to be a fairly new site with lots of games and resources in the works. I look forward to keeping up with it and sharing it with my students!

I immediately added it to the lesson plans for our next Investment Club Meeting (a.k.a. group class name for this year’s practice incentive theme) and can’t wait to try it with my students. Maybe this will cement stem placement principles in their minds once and for all!

With his eyes closed, Andrew draws a scale block from the container. Whichever side he looks at first is the note that he must draw on the staff (for the younger students who haven’t learned sharps and flats yet, we just go with the natural note on the block that they select).

The student may draw the note anywhere they want in the treble of bass clef…but they can only use each line or space once! So, if they draw multiples of the same note, they have to find another place to draw it on the staff. We haven’t done this yet, but you could even have the student play the “pattern” of notes on the piano after they’ve used up the length of the staff!