This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending our state music teachers conference with approximately 80 other teachers from across the state. This is always a highlight of my teaching year, and I was reminded yet again of the value of attending such events. For those who maybe haven’t taken the step yet of […]
Free Resources from the Creative Piano Teacher Website
Thanks to a tip from Amy Chaplin in her Friday Finds #264, I was introduced to the Creative Piano Teacher website. The site is run by Olivia Ellis and Davis Dorrough and has a fabulous collection of colorful and well-designed free resources for piano teachers. They have an entire section of Free Resources, and I […]
Practice Incentives…for the Dads??
“My dad said I should start with my map pin here because that would give me the most central location for getting to the other destinations.” ~student after the September Surprise “My dad had a question…can you go around the world to the east and come back in on the west?” ~student at the first […]
Free Music Listening Challenge Game
One of the favorite activities from our September Surprise! this year was the Music Listening Challenge. Teams had 4 minutes to listen to 10 musical excerpts and try to correctly identify the piece title and composer. I’ve added a free download of this Music Listening Challenge game to the Music Matters Blog store, so feel […]
September Surprise! 2023 Highlights
Whew! What a whirlwind it is when the school year starts back up and lessons are in full swing! As usual, we launched our new year of lessons with a September Surprise: We began the evening with the big announcement of this year’s practice incentive theme! This is one of my favorite things to plan […]
3,000 Piano Repertoire Videos
I have a vague recollection of hearing about this project at one point, but I was thrilled to recently rediscover the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Project! Their description explains, “Over the course of the next few years, we will be posting basically the complete piano teaching repertoire for beginners to intermediate level pianists. In […]
