What a whirlwind these piano camp weeks are! Five days are here and gone before you know it. We wrapped up our final day of our Piano Expeditions piano camp with more games, more singing, more dancing, more coloring, more piano playing, more reading, and a special presentation for the parents to showcase what we learned. Here is a glimpse into the final day:
We added the minor pentascale to our collection of scales we learned about this week, so we played a fun Major or Minor? game where the students had to listen to the scale I played, determine if it was major or minor, and draw a face on their white boards to reflect what they thought.
The minor scale is especially fun for improvisation. I just had to branch out a bit when Elyse told me she wanted the mood for her piece to be happy.
The students love having the opportunity to do a short presentation for their parents on the last day of piano camp.
The older piano camp group test their knowledge of all the scales we’ve learned this week: Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic, Whole Tone, Major Pentascale, and Minor Pentascale. I discovered it’s quite handy to have a xylophone for quick demonstrations from the floor!
Since we were reading Welcome to the Opera for our story this year, I included a section in the student workbooks where they could create their own story by following the steps laid out each day. A couple of the students went above and beyond and created an entire book together, complete with colorful full-page drawings and text!
“I love this game!” – What one returning piano camp student exclaimed as soon as he saw me pulling our Eggspert quiz game from the closet. This is always a fun way to quiz the students to see what they learned and how much they can remember from the week.
Here’s a video of the older piano camp group demonstrating the cup tapping for all their parents and younger siblings peering in the doors. They loved the challenge of getting faster and faster each time we practiced! (I just turned on a fun rhythm pattern with auto accompaniment on my keyboard to play in the background while we tapped.)
Finally, a huge thanks to my wonderful husband for taking the time each day to take so many videos and photos to capture our week of adventure. I found this shot that he snapped in my camera roll at the end of today and thought it was adorable. So many little lives that we have the privilege of welcoming through our doors. What an incredible blessing to get to know them and hopefully help cultivate a lifelong love of music and learning. Soli Deo Gloria!
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