“My dad said I should start with my map pin here because that would give me the most central location for getting to the other destinations.” ~student after the September Surprise “My dad had a question…can you go around the world to the east and come back in on the west?” ~student at the first […]
Ideas for Parents
September Surprise! 2023 Highlights
Whew! What a whirlwind it is when the school year starts back up and lessons are in full swing! As usual, we launched our new year of lessons with a September Surprise: We began the evening with the big announcement of this year’s practice incentive theme! This is one of my favorite things to plan […]
32 Free Folk Songs and Popular Tunes for Easy Piano
One area of particular interest for me is folk songs from different countries. Especially when I’m putting together the Piano Expeditions piano camp curriculum, I enjoy trying to find folk songs from the country we’re “visiting” and see if they can be adapted for use in our week of piano camp. I was recently checking […]
The Cliburn Organization Relaunches Cliburn Kids
In the wake of this year’s pandemic, The Cliburn organization launched a music education site for kids. Now they’ve completed relaunched Cliburn Kids as a “robust online music education program” and it looks fabulous! Most episodes are less than 10 minutes and feature engaging Classical music selections with commentary by Buddy Bray that encourages students […]
Review and Giveaway of I Wish I Didn’t Quit: Music Lessons
With bookend stories about the fictitious piano student Olivia in his new book, I Wish I Didn’t Quit: Music Lessons, author Nathan Holder paints a picture first of an all-too familiar scenario and later an ideal scenario when it comes to studying music. Himself a member of the “I-wish-I-didn’t-quit” statistic, Holder writes from a collection […]
Should You Consider a Rent-to-Own Piano? – A Guest Post by Drew Guifarro
Note from Natalie: I learned early on as a piano teacher that I had to ask prior to even conducting an interview with a prospective studio family if they owned a piano. Beyond that, I learned the hard way that I had to insist that they purchase one prior to beginning lessons, and that it […]
