I’ve also been planning on doing an “Introduction to the piano” course…can’t wait to see your lesson plans! How many days does your camp go for?
It’s getting to be that time of year when we all start thinking about summer plans! At least, in theory we are all thinking about summer plans, right? In reality, I assume that some of you are just trying to survive the upcoming year-end contests/tests/evaluations, etc. like I am. 🙂 Anyway…here are some thoughts on planning a successful summer piano camp:
- Survey your families ahead of time to find out if they are interested in participating in a summer piano camp and to determine their availability. This is a must! You don’t want to put in all the work to plan a great camp and then find out that the schedule you’ve planned on won’t work for anyone. A lesson I learned the hard way! (Here’s a link to a free downloadable survey that I’ve used in the past.)
- I hold my regular piano camps every day of one week for two hours a day. The camp usually follows some sort of theme or at least is based on specific objectives. A Carnival of the Animals Summer Piano Camp was a huge hit one year! My high school students also had a great time one year doing an Isaac Watts film project.
- When I launched a Pre-piano Camp last year for 3-5 year-olds, I held it one day a week for six weeks – one hour a day. That seemed to work really well for the little ones. I think the program I put together for them could easily have been stretched to a 12-week course to use in the fall (which I’m thinking of doing this fall!) because we had to skip over some of the activities.
- Keep in mind the needs and interests of your students and families. This year I’m thinking about including two different summer piano camp theme options when I survey my families to see what would be of the most interest to them. Piano camps are a ton of fun and there are so many great resources available that it’s worth it for every teacher to give it a try! Anyone else working on plans for summer piano camps this year? If you have developed or come across a great resource for this purpose, feel free to share it!
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!
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