Piano Camp Day Three – To the Grand Canyon with Grofé and His Suite

Wednesday often feels like a turning point in the piano camp week; the students have grown comfortable with the setting and with one another and tend to be very energetic (a.k.a. naughty). I found this to be true of my younger group today, but not so much with the older ones. Nevertheless, it was still a ton of fun, and I’d rather see kids excited and having a great time than sitting around perfectly behaved and bored! Here are a few highlights from today:

I pulled a little wooden xylophone off my shelf for today’s Welcome to Piano Camp song, and the students loved it!

Full of smiles as we color and listen to movement three of Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite: On the Trail. The students perked up almost immediately when they heard the clip-clopping sound in the music and said it sounded just like a horse!

A quick selfie with my fabulous assistant, Stephanie, who does SO much to make this whole week of piano camps possible!

The kids are loving the Welcome to Jazz book Stephanie is reading them each day.

In following yesterday’s suggestion from one of the older students, we started off their piano camp today with the next round of the Whole-Step-Half-Step game tournament. What a fabulous idea!

We use Heartbeat Rhythms to do all kinds of rhythm activities – tapping, clapping, listening, and dictation. The older group loves getting a chance to create a rhythm pattern for the rest of us to figure out and tap back!

Charlotte excitedly displays the two cards she drew for the interactive Welcome to Jazz story – her favorites!

We learned the Major pentascale pattern today, so our game outside was Major Scale Imposter! The students had to determine if the card in the bag was a major pentascale or an imposter. True major pentascales gave them a letter to take back to their team which they collected and then unscrambled to form a music-related word.

It is getting HOT outside, so I try to keep the games quick and then we wrap up with a snack. In light of today’s musical selection everyone received a small bag of trail mix. Yum!