Our first six-week Pre-Piano Camp session just ended last week and I’m excited to report that it was a success! I learned a lot in the process and the students and I had a fabulous time. We launched into the session with specific objectives and a ton of activity ideas to help communicate and reinforce those objectives. I definitely had to do some tweaking as we went, but now I’m thrilled to have a curriculum and student workbook that I can use over and over again to offer a class like this any time of year!

The curriculum is designed to run for six days (I did one morning per week for six weeks) and works best with students 4-5 years old. I scheduled the class to run for one hour each week, but would highly recommend doing an hour and fifteen minutes or an hour and a half instead because we were always running out of time. Each week is structured in 10-minute segments, focusing on rhythm and pulse, keyboard skills, memory work and choir (including hymn history stories), written theory, and music appreciation (including listening to music and stories about the lives of the great composers).

The Pre-Piano Camp package includes an overview of the class, including student prerequisites, objectives, a general weekly outline; plus a week-by-week guide for each class, complete with supplementary resource recommendations and links. Plus, when you order the package, you’ll also receive a free 31-page student workbook that correlates with the lesson plans and provides each student with a fun keepsake from their musical adventure!

As I mentioned last week, in A Peak Into Our Pre-Piano Camp, we’ve been having a blast at this fun piano camp this year! We just finished our final week yesterday, so I’m busy getting all the files and links ready so that I can make them available for any other teachers who want to do a similar camp. In the meantime, here’s another look at one of the super fun games that we played.

After learning A-F, it was time to do some reviewing and make sure we understood the proper order of the notes on the keyboard. For that, we needed to call in some reinforcements.

Each of these stuffed friends was given a flashcard for one of the keys on the piano (I just taped them to their chests). After the cards were all placed, I mixed the bears up and then let each student take a turn putting them back in the correct order so that we could say the names of the keys in the proper order. They got such a kick out of playing the game with the stuffed teddy bears!

This summer I’m trying something completely new – a pre-piano camp for 3-5 year-olds. Wow, it has been a blast! Even though I only had two students enroll in this session, I decided to go ahead with it because I knew it would help me tweak my plans and make sure they were age-appropriate. It’s been such a hit with these two, though, and there were quite a few other families that were interested but couldn’t do the summer session that I’m considering offering the class again in the fall.

As soon as we finish our last week, I’m planning to publish the lesson plans for those who might be interested, but in the meantime, I’ll give you a sneak peak into a couple of our favorite activities:

By the third week we had learned C, D, and E so I gave each of the girls three little game pieces and let them put them on any group of C-D-E they could find on the piano. Once they had correctly placed the pieces, they could improvise and play around on those three keys. Then we would find another group of C-D-E and do the same thing. It was a great way to provide some parameters, but then let them explore and be creative as well.

On week four we learned F and B as well, so it was time for a fun matching game! Each column of flashcards contained the five keys learned thus far. The girls took turns flipping over one of the yellow cards and then seeing if they could find a match by flipping over one of the orange cards. As they flipped over each card, they had to say the name of the key that was marked with the “X.” If it was a match, they got to keep it; if not, they had to turn them back over and it was the next one’s turn. It proved to be quite the challenge, but they eventually found all the matches!

I’ve perused your piano camp lesson plans and student workbook. They’re all very well done. I have some questions for you:

1) How do you schedule piano camp amidst summer private lessons?
2) What hours do you run the camp?
3) Are students able to take only a part of the camp and still know what’s going on if they missed earlier camp days?
4) If you’re willing to share the following question, great, but if not that’s fine too: How do you charge for piano camp?
5) What number(s) of students is a good number, and what number is too many?

It can be a bit intimidating to think about offering a piano camp for the first time, but I highly recommend it! Here are my answers to each question, along with some things I’ve learned over the past several years.

1) I do a survey at the end of the spring semester that helps me ascertain everyone’s summer plans and schedule accordingly. Here’s a post with a sample of the survey I use: http://musicmattersblog.com/2010/05/06/summer-is-just-around-the-corner/. I wait to figure out all the scheduling until I’ve heard back from everyone. Interestingly, this year I’m not even holding a regular piano camp because so many of my students opted to either continue with private lessons or take the summer off. I’m trying a new idea, though – a Pre-Piano Camp for children ages 3-5 who want an introduction to piano. The format is different for that; I’m hoping to share more about it later this summer after we have several more weeks “under our belt” so I can let you know how it’s working!

2) You’ll be able to see the options for this in the above survey as well. I do it for 2 hours each day. Since I’ve had up to three camps in one week before, I’ve sometimes done 10-12, 1-3, and 3:30-5:30. 2 hours seems like just the right amount of time for my studio.

3) I’ve had students miss a day or two here and there and it’s usually pretty easy to fill them in and pick up with wherever we’re at.

4) I charge the same as my monthly 45-minute lesson rate. This covers the week of camp, plus all supplies.

5) I’ve had anywhere between 4 and 8. It kind of depends on what all you’ll be doing and what equipment you have available. If you’re doing ensemble playing, then you’ll probably want to limit the number of students to the number of instruments you have available. I love working with all different-sized groups; you just have to factor in the different dynamics and then work with it.

I know there are quite a few other teachers who hold piano camps in the summer, so feel free to jump in with your own thoughts on what works well (and what doesn’t!) for your studio!

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!

One of my students would like to participate in a Summer Piano Camp in Northern New Jersey.  I found that Westminister Choir College has a good piano camp in Princeton, NJ.  Are you aware of any other camps or Summer piano programs in Northern NJ?

I received the above question from a reader and said that I would post it here to see if anyone else could help. I’m not very familiar with summer camps around the country, but figured that some of you might be involved in various camps and/or workshops and would want to let others know about them on here.

In fact, I just received some information about a Summer Piano Pedagogy Workshop at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota that features Gerald Klickstein, author of The Musician’s Way, among others. It looks fabulous, and I wish that I could attend!

If you are aware of either a summer music camp for students and/or a workshop for music teachers, please feel free to leave the info in the comments below!

In preparation for summer, I just sent home a Summer Survey with each of my students last week. I started sending these home with my students several years ago when I first started offering summer piano camps and it has been so helpful! Early on in my teaching, I made the mistake of planning an elaborate piano camp without conducting a survey first and was so disappointed when many of the students were unable to come during the week I had scheduled it to take place. Now I do some preliminary planning, but wait to do the bulk of it until I know what my families’ plans are.

Feel free to download and adapt this survey for use in your studios!

Related Posts: More About Planning Piano Camps | Piano Camp Lesson Plans and Free Student Workbook

While I was perusing Heidi’s blog, I came across this super cool idea! She put together Piano Preschool Lapbooks that include a variety of music flashcards and visual aids. I LOVE these and think that I will add them to the list of ideas to incorporate into the preschool piano camp that I’m putting together for this summer. There are so many great ideas…how will I ever fit it all into a 1 hour session for 6 weeks?!

Check out this giant-sized piano keyboard that Laura Lowe made using a bed sheet and permanent markers! I LOVE it! Especially as I work on plans for our pre-piano summer camp, I’m going to keep this in mind and hopefully make one. Don’t you think the little kiddos would have a blast with this?! I also love Laura’s ideas for teaching intervals, and could see using it for scales and chords, too. What fun!

You may remember that I was so enthralled with the Maestro! game at the MTNA Conference that I purchased it to use with my students. Well, the opportune time came last Thursday when we had our fifth Briefing Session (a.k.a. group class) of the year. We had some extra time at the end of all the performances and theory presentations, so I unwrapped the packaging and my students and I figured out how to play it.

There were 16 of us present (slightly more than the 2-4 players the game is designed for!), so I had them organize into 4 teams of 4. We were a bit squished, but still had plenty of fun!

One of the things that I love about the Maestro! game is the integration of a variety of different learning areas – history, geography, composer biographies, and strategy. Another thing I like is that the play is simple enough for any student to understand, but leaves lots of room for creative alterations. I also got to scan through all the pages that are included on the companion CD that I’m even contemplating the possibility of using this as my piano camp theme this year instead of writing my own! I’ve never done this before, so it will take some serious consideration before I make a final decision. But that’s how much I love this material that Suzanne has developed!

In addition to offering a regular summer piano camp for my students this year, like I’ve done for the past several years, I’m also planning to offer a pre-piano camp for 3-5 year olds. I’ve taught preschool music classes in a co-op setting before, but haven’t ever offered such a camp here in my studio. I am really thrilled about this possibility, though, because I think it’s so helpful for children to have musical experiences prior to commencing piano lessons. I’m still working out all the lesson plan details, but I came across this wonderful collection of Early Childhood Online Music Resources on Joy’s Color In My Piano blog several weeks ago and have had it bookmarked ever since!

The format I’m planning for this pre-piano camp is a 1-hour class once a week on a weekday morning. The hour will be divided into 10-minute increments with a whole variety of different activities to keep the children engaged and excited about what they are learning. I have quite a few families interested in the class, so I think we’ll have to limit the size, but I’m really excited to see how it goes!

Have any of you all put together your own class like this before? Any resources or suggestions that you think would be helpful in planning and preparing for it? I’ll take all the input I can get!