Category Archives: This Week in Photos

Marshmallows and Music Festival!

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Last Saturday, one of our local associations held a fall festival dubbed, Marshmallows and Music. I’ve always wanted to put on an outdoor recital, so I was thrilled to be a part of this group effort! We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day for our inaugural effort of what may become a yearly favorite!


One of our members graciously invited us to use her home/tree farm for the festive occasion. Isn’t it gorgeous?!


Each of the students donned their brightly colored festival t-shirt for the occasion! Several rows of chairs provided seating for the students just in front of the deck so that we could quickly work through each of the performances. Family members and friends brought chairs and blankets to place on the lawn where they could listen and enjoy the performances.


Here’s a snapshot of all of my students who participated in the event (except for one who disappeared right before we took the picture!).


Ben, Joey, and Jed did a great job working together to prepare a captivating performance of, Secrets, by OneRepublic for the event.


Noelle, Naomi, and Amanda did a lovely job with their rendition of, Impromptu, by Gurlitt.

I am so proud of each of my students and their musical performances! And I’m so grateful for the dedication of other teachers in the area that enables us to collaborate and put on events like this for the benefit of our students, their families, and the broader community.

Are any of you involved in festivals with your students this fall?

And this Year’s Practice Incentive Theme Is…

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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!

Scale Labels

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One of my favorite new tools to use with students are these fabulous keyboard labels that Susan Paradis, of the Piano Teacher Resources blog, created. I’ve started sticking one or more of these labels in the student’s assignment book and having them say the whole-step half-step pattern and place X’s on the corresponding keys. In light of some of our recent discussions on scale fingerings, it occurred to me that you could also use these to have the student write the finger number that plays each key instead of just marking the key with an X. It seems like that could be particularly effective; I’ll have to try it!

Here’s another fun activity that I did last week to reinforce scales. Hayley chose memorizing the Major sharp key signatures for her Cosmic Challenge last week and did a fabulous job, so I decided to reward her with this game:

1. Hayley randomly chose a flashcard with a Major sharp key signature from my hand.
2. When I said go, I started a timer and she could look at the card. Then she had to select and arrange the scale blocks to form the corresponding Major scale. (I encouraged her to line up all the notes diatonically first and then go back through and rotate them to indicate the appropriate sharps.)
3. After she was done, she would say “stop” and I would stop the timer. (I had told her that she would earn 10 points if she arranged the blocks correctly without any input from me. She asked if she could earn bonus points for doing it faster, so that’s when we added the timer element!)

Hayley loved playing this game and was quite pleased with all the points she racked up in the process! I really love all the great discussion and ideas that have been shared in regard to scales lately – it’s re-motivating me to emphasize scale theory and playing with all my students. I’d love to hear any other great ideas for helping students work on scale theory and/or playing!

Piano Camp – A Game and Final Performances!

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For our final day of Piano Camp, I decided to switch things up just a little and play a game to start off the lesson.

Since we were focusing on relative keys today, I printed off a copy of my Major Minor Scale Matchup Worksheet on cardstock and then cut it into rectangles with one scale per piece. I distributed the pieces to the students and had them write the scale names, using the patterns from the previous two days to determine if a scale was Major or minor.

Once all the scale names were written, we mixed up the cards and then layed them out for a fun (and long!) game of memory.

Also, today I had each of the ensemble groups perform their piece for the rest of us. For one week’s worth of practice, I think they all did a pretty good job. And I think each of the groups are planning to keep polishing up their pieces so that they can play them at our September Surprise kickoff event. Here are video clips so you can watch each of the performances:


Noelle and Luke play Important Questions, from Simply Silly Duets by Kevin and Julia Olson. Even though Luke still has trouble with music notation, he loved this piece and really got into the feel of it!


Naomi and Isabella play Smile, Op. 280, No. 1 by Ernesto Becucci, from Easy Classical Piano Duets for Teacher and Student, Book 3.


Joey, Graham, and Ryan did a super job working together on Camptown Races, Arr, by Carrie Kraft. But I think they had the most fun planning and rehearsing their special surprise ending! :-)

Next up, I’m planning to post a Piano Camp 2009 Resource list with quick links to all the resources I used to plan this year’s camp…

Piano Camp – Composer Spotlight!

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We just finished our third morning of Piano Camp. Hard to believe we only have one day left! One of our daily activities is a Composer Spotlight. I wanted to highlight some of the lesser known composers, and also incorporate aspects of how they used their music to glorify God. I already had on my shelves the perfect book to accomplish this dual purpose: Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers by Patrick Cavanaugh. So, for about 15-20 minutes at the end of our time, I read the story of one of the composers while the students color the picture of that composer in their workbooks.

I selected Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, and Ives as our composers for the week. Several of the coloring pages came from this page of the Making Music Fun website. For the ones I couldn’t find, I used detailed portraits and then had my sister convert them into coloring pages using her design software.

Here, Luke and Graham display their colored pictures of Haydn. (I found out how much my students love coloring when I did a Carnival of the Animals Piano Camp two years ago.) After I finish reading the story, I play one of the corresponding radio broadcasts from the Classics for Kids show. I also included the correlating activity sheets produced by Classics for Kids in each of the workbooks. They can work on these if there is any extra time after they’ve finished coloring, or they can do them on their own after Piano Camp is over.

To be continued…

Piano Camp – Ensembles!

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Continuing with the Piano Camp theme for the week, here are a few pictures from another one of our daily activities – ensemble playing! I played through a whole stack of ensemble repertoire last week looking for the perfect combinations for the group of students attending Piano Camp this week. We allocoate about 15-20 minutes each day to learn and rehearse their pieces. I make the rounds between each group, but for the most part just let them work on their own. This is always really motivating for them. They work hard to get their pieces down by the end of the week – an exciting accomplishment, to be sure!

Naomi and Isabella are loving this lively duet: Smile, Op. 280, No. 1 by Ernesto Becucci, from Easy Classical Piano Duets for Teacher and Student, Book 3.

These three boys are quite the trio! They all have strong personalities, so it’s definitely a challenge for them to work together, but they are doing a fantastic job! Their trio is part of the Keyboard Ensemble Series: Camptown Races, Arr, by Carrie Kraft.

I paired Noelle with Luke because I knew she’d be willing to help him figure out his notes and rhythms, and because she could easily learn and play the teacher accompaniment. They are playing the really cool-sounding Important Questions, from Simply Silly Duets by Kevin and Julia Olson.

To be continued…

Piano Camp – Improvising!

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One of the other activities we are doing each day of Piano Camp is improvising. I start out by having all the students play the pentascale, chord progression, and arpeggio of a given key. We do this several times all together. Then, I play an accompaniment CD and they play along with the CD.


After one run-through, I let them choose what order they want to play the various elements in (scale, arpeggio, etc.) as long as they stay on beat and try to match the style and character of the accompaniment. I conduct while they play and give them a signal leading into the final measure so that we all end together.


I have a couple of students at the piano, a couple at one keyboard, one at another keyboard, one on the bells, and one on the xylophone. After a couple times through, they all switch to a different instrument, and those on the keyboards can select another orchestral instrument for their sound setting. (The ones on the xylophone and bells just play the chord root or the chord shell during the chord progressions.)

By Thursday and Friday, I should be able to let them do a full-fledged improvisation in the key, but for now it helps to give them some structure within which to play. Either way it’s a lot of fun and sounds pretty cool! :-)

To be continued…

Piano Camp in Pictures

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Since I’m holding Piano Camp this week, I thought I’d give you a look into what we do each day. You can see the outline of my objectives for the week on the post Working on Piano Camp Lesson Plans. Not surprisingly, some of the activities took a little longer than I anticipated, so we didn’t get to everything that I had planned. We couldn’t believe how fast the time flew by! I’ll try to post pictures from several of our activities each day. Here are a few from today:

Here’s a snapshot of the workbooks I put together for each student. Once all the pages were printed, I three-hole punched them and then fastened them in these colorful folders. We’ll be working out of these each day, and then the students will be allowed to take them home at the end of the week to complete additional worksheets and activities that we have to skip or leave incomplete due to time constraints.

The first activity today was the assignment for each student to draw a diagram of the piano keyboard – as accurately as they could based on their memory/knowledge of how many keys, etc. This was a good intro into discussing what keyboard topography is and why it’s important. We also discussed the history and design of the piano in more detail.

Our next activity is what I called “The Blindfold Challenge.” Each student took his/her turn sitting at the piano with the blindfold and had to play groups of either two black keys or three black keys up and down the keyboard. The goal was to be as smooth and accurate as possible. This was a challenge, but they all did a great job coming up with various strategies to help with accuracy and fluidity!

To be continued…

Kansas Music Teachers State Conference

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This weekend, I’ve been attending our annual state music teachers conference. We’ve had a slate of wonderful musicians and presenters. Here are some pictures with a few notes:

The conference began with Brenda Dillon sharing about the Recreational Music Making program that has been developed in the last several years.

Dr. Robert Weirich gave a masterclass yesterday. My student, Luke, was one of four that played for Dr. Weirich. It was a wonderful experience! I always love attending masterclasses and learning from other teachers – watching their interaction with the students, and their approach for dealing with the problems that they observe.

In the evening, Dr. Weirich gave a lecture recital called “Aaron Copland’s America: Cultural Identity Explored through his Piano Music.”

I’m more familiar with Copland’s orchestral music than his piano music. And for the most part, I prefer his orchestral music, although Dr. Weirich introduced me to some nice piano selections as well.

This morning, Wendy Stevens gave a session on teaching composition to our students. You can find a lot of great material and tips on her new website.

Tony Caramia spent the day with us yesterday and then presented two workshops today. It was fun to meet him in person and find out that he is a Music Matters Blog fan! :-) He’s got a great sense of humor, and of course is a wonderful Jazz musician.

There were numerous other aspects of the weekend, but these are some of the highlights. I love attending our state conference each year! It’s been a great way to connect with teachers from across the state, meet and learn from wonderful presenters, and pick up lots of great teaching ideas! Do any of you attend your state conference? Have you been to any particularly interesting sessions? Or heard any particularly great presenters?

Time for Some Pictures!

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It’s looking a little dull around here these days, so I thought it was about time for a picture post! Here are a couple things that have been going on in my studio recently…

Do you use the penny practice game? I have a jar of pennies sitting on my desk and my students frequently ask if they can play the penny game when we are spot practicing a difficult section in one of their pieces. The student just decides how many pennies they’d like to use. All the pennies they select are placed on the left side of the piano music rack. If they play the difficult spot perfectly, they get to move a penny to the other side. If they mess up, all the pennies on the right have to be moved back to the left. The goal is to get all of the pennies moved over to the right side. If they are successful, I let them keep the pennies. You wouldn’t believe how excited some of them get about taking home 8 cents! :-) James, above, especially loves this game – and it’s perfect for him because he’s one of those start-at-the-beginning-and-play-the-whole-thing-again-if-he-makes-a-mistake students.

Earlier this month twelve of my students participated in one of our favorite activities of the year – The Clavinova Festival (nine of the ones pictured above are my students – the other three were in a different recital)! As a part of the festival, all the students get their name entered in a drawing for their own Clavinova. I practically squealed into the phone when Johnny called me to tell me that he won the Clavinova this year! Amazingly, that makes four students from my studio who have won a Clavinova over the years. (And one of them is sitting in my studio, because the student who won it gave it to me as a birthday present that year!)

For his mastery challenge last week, Andrew was working on memorizing the Major Sharp key signatures. Since he’s still a little young to fully grasp the concept, I tried this approach with him. I mixed up all the key signature flashcards and then had him arrange them in order from the least sharps to the most sharps. He knew that the key signature with none was C-Major, so we put the C scale block in front of that flashcard. Then I had him hold up his right hand and figure out the fifth note above C by saying the notes followin C in the alphabet to see which note corresponded to his pinky finger. It was G, so the G scale block got placed in front of the G-Major key signature. And so on. He loved doing this and was ecstatic when he conquered the challenge by getting everything unscrambled and lined up in the correct order in less than 30 seconds! What a diligent little student!