Group Class – Keeping it Simple

One of the greatest benefits of offering regular group classes in my piano studio is the camaraderie that develops between students. They love coming, playing games, performing music, and hanging out together. Sometimes the simplest activities prove to be the most fun! Such was the case at October’s group class. We began with a fun variation on a game I played with my students years ago, but had forgotten about. This time I used a 20-sided letter die from our Scattergories game:

We sat in a circle and one of us rolled the die. As soon as it landed, we had to call out any word related to music that begins with the letter shown on the top of the die. Whoever called out the word first got to roll the die for the next turn. We couldn’t use repeat answers, and if someone contested a word, we took a vote to determine if it qualified or not. Super simple and super fun!

For our next game, we sat in a circle and each person took a turn tapping the rhythm to a favorite Christmas song on the floor while everyone else listened and then tried to guess the song. It’s amazing how quickly these students can associate rhythms with the right song!

For our final game (after we concluded all the performances and a couple students left early) we pulled out some rhythm instruments and a set of rhythm cards from the fabulous Tapping Telephones game. Everyone selected four cards and placed them in the order of their choosing, then practiced the rhythms. Once everyone was ready, I set a backup beat on the keyboard and we created our own rhythm orchestra. We tried this multiple times with different beat patterns on the keyboard and various tempi. It was a great way to make music together!

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