Okay, I admit this is actually last week in photos, but at this point I’m just proud of myself for actually getting these posted…

On Monday morning, shortly before my first lesson of the day, I decided to try a new game for the week – Chord Spelling Bee Challenge. I grabbed several plain wood blocks, painted them orange, and then used a black marker to write different types of chords on the sides of the blocks. I did one with just Major/Minor, one with Major/Minor/Augmented/Diminished, and one with Major 7th/Minor 7th/Diminished 7th/Dominant 7th.

I chose the chord block based on the student’s level and had them roll it to determine what type of chord they were required to build and spell. Then they closed their eyes and drew a scale block from the jar to determine the identity of the chord. They had to play the correct keys on the piano and spell them out loud as they went. I kept track on a white board of how many they got correct and how many they got incorrect. Just like a spelling bee, if they played one incorrectly, it was counted wrong (even if they corrected it).

At the end of the lesson, the student got to write his or her name on the door, along with their score. This proved to be a fun way to reinforce an understanding of how to build different types of chords. Plus, it was funny to watch their reactions when they were spelling chords and I would tell them that what they were playing was not a G, but an A-double-flat.   (By the way, is there such a thing as a triplet flat? For example…how would you spell a C-flat Diminished 7th chord? C-flat, E-double-flat, G-double-flat, B-triplet-flat? That one stumped me! Theory geeks, please chime in and help me out on this…)

In other studio pictures…Melodie and Grant are playing a duet version of We Wish You a Merry Christmas for the recital next week and they have done a superb job learning it!

Finally, I just had to take a picture of Gus when he came in and asked if he could play Old McDonald for me. He is Grant and Melodie’s younger brother, and Grant taught him how to play this song. I told Grant he better not be trying to put me out of business by taking my upcoming students and teaching them himself – that’s my job security right there, you know!

Joey has made huge strides in his understanding and execution of scales this year, so I thought I would put him to the test with this fun Scale Scramble game. I placed all the scale blocks that corresponded to a particular scale on the fall board and then timed him to see how fast he could arrange them into the correct scale. It was a bit of a challenge at first, but we did several and he got pretty fast at it!

Luke is the acclaimed comedian in the studio. He has been known to give a gut-busting performance routine and I never quite know what to expect from him… I had seen him the night before his lesson at an event and we were discussing possible character descriptions for him in a drama role with another organization I work with. He said he would like to play a nervous, fidgety, quirky, sort of character and I asked him what that would look like. So, the next day he showed up for his lesson as “Herman” and I got a very good visual representation of such a character. He was hilarious and of course I had to take a picture!

I’ve been brainstorming different game ideas using flashcards and told Caleb I wanted to try one out on him. I started by giving him the treble clef C, D, and E. Then I played various patterns using those three notes and he had to arrange them in the correct order. He aced those, so we quickly moved on to 5-note patterns. The 5-note patterns usually took a couple of play-throughs, but he eventually got all but one of them correct. It turned out to be pretty fun and a great way to work on melodic dictation.

True to our agreement last week, I got to choose the game this week at the end of James’ lesson. I chose a variation of Whack-it!. I placed all the treble clef notes from middle C to high F on the floor and set the timer for one minute. As I called out note names, James had to whack the corresponding card. If he was correct, I took the card away and called out a new note name. If he was wrong, I placed a previously-removed card back in front of him. The goal was to collect as many cards as possible before the time ran out. Once we finished the treble clef, I took my turn with him calling the notes and then we repeated the game with bass clef notes from middle C down to low G. I pretty much creamed him – even with him implementing various stalling tactics when he was calling the note names. So he insisted that next week he gets to choose the game again.

You will notice a common element in each of the following pictures. They are all a variation of the same game. I affectionately call it “The Dice Game.” Here are the basics of how it works:

* One die has the words “up” and “down” on it; the other one has either “steps” and “skips” or “half steps” and “whole steps” or pictures of intervals on a staff or pictures of intervals on a keyboard (you can view a close up shot of the interval dice in this treble clef game post). For the other “dice” I just use wooden blocks and write the words on them.

* Each player (the student and myself) selects a colored game marker and places it on middle C.

* Take turns rolling both dice and moving the game marker accordingly.

* Set a timer for five minutes.

* Whoever is the highest on the piano when the time runs out is the winner.

This is undoubtedly the favorite lesson game in my studio. For some reason I almost always lose. Hmm…maybe that’s why it’s the favorite…

Luke is still in the early stages of reading printed music and needs lots of reinforcement with the concept of steps versus skips. Now if we can just transfer this concept to staff reading, we’ll be all set!

Caleb is tackling some tough pieces right now and I thought faster identification of intervals on the staff and transfer to the keyboard might be a good objective for him. Sure enough, by the end of our game he was identifying the various intervals as they turned up on the dice with hardly any hesitation!

I was going to play a different game with James, but he begged me to play this one again. He has gotten really good at differentiating half and whole steps now and managed to maintain his undefeated title against me with this game. I told him I am never playing against him on it again and next week I get to choose a different game!

Graham and I played the rhythm chart game and then when I went to take a picture, he fell to his knees and exclaimed, “Please, have mercy!” Never a dull moment during his lessons, huh?

My new little beginner, Emily, continues to amaze me! I gave her the assignment of memorizing the alphabet backwards last week and she came back and spouted it off with no hesitation. We just played a quick game where I gave her a set of scale blocks and then timed her to see how fast she could arrange them going backwards. She clocked in at a little over 30 seconds. I told her I thought she could cut that time in half, so we tried it again and she blew that time out of the water with a new record of 11 seconds!

Emily again. (Can you tell I love working with beginning students?!) This time we were working on contrasting the forte and piano sections of her Old McDonald song. I pulled out my collection of colorful highlighter tape and let her choose the colors she thought best represented a forte sound and a piano sound. Then we tore off little pieces and she placed the corresponding colors over top of the dynamic markings. She really got into this and talked through her analysis of each color and what she thought it would sound like before settling on the two she chose.

Thursday evening I made the short trek to a neighboring town for Cynthia’s choir concert. Her choir teacher, upon finding out that Cynthia had composed a piece on the piano, asked her to play it in class one day and ended up programming it into the evening’s concert. You can barely see Cynthia in the bottom left hand corner of the picture, playing her beautiful composition while her friend performs an artistic dance on stage. What a special opportunity!

Saturday morning, our local music teachers association sponsored a Festival of Music. Several of my students participated and here Luke performs Benda’s Sonatina in A Minor.

Kind of a varied week in the studio (and around town, I guess!), but that’s what keeps teaching so fun!

Chord Sharing
Prompted by one of the suggestions given in the improvising workshop I attended at the state conference earlier this month, I pulled one scale block from the jar (D) and instructed my high school student to see how many different chords she could come up with that contained the D. She went through all the triads and then launched into 7th chords until she had counted 24 different chords! By the end, she exclaimed, “Oooh! This is really fun!”

Whenever my students get to the Forest Drums song in the Faber Level 1 books, I like to pull out my Djembe and have them beat a steady pulse while I play through it for them. Addi loved drumming and had fun adjusting the tempo on me while I was playing along to her beat.

Cynthia was working on mastering the order of sharps and flats this week, so after she recited them to me, I had her demonstrate her mastery further by notating them on the staff.

Luke is learning his landmark notes on the staff, so we played a fun mix-up game with his flashcards. I would rearrange the order of the cards and have him play them and say the name of each note while he played. He got it down so well, that I decided to twist it up a little. I played a pattern of notes on the keys and asked him to arrange the cards in the correct order to reflect what I played. This proved to be a great deal more challenging and took several tries! We’ll have to keep working on that since he has the notes learned so well now!

I just couldn’t pass this one up… Isabella and I laughed for at least a minute at this comical perspective we shot of Graham. Not specifically musical or educational, but oh well, you can’t say we don’t have fun at piano lessons! And that wraps up another week here at the studio.