If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that I’m a huge proponent of using rote teaching with all of my students. Here are a few favorite pieces from this fall: How do you get an energetic 8-year old boy who wants to play everything lightning fast to appreciate playing beautiful musical sounds […]
Fun Extras!
Music Theory Crossword Puzzle from Doug Hanvey
Doug Hanvey has been a guest blogger here before. Check out his posts on Fearless Arranging: Teaching Younger Students to Arrange and 8 Things You Didn’t Know About Piano Technique. Today he is back with a fun summer activity for you and your students! Ready for a fun summertime music challenge? Do you know what […]
Practice Incentive Brings Unusual Blessings
Drawing inspiration from Proverbs 11:25: “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched,” I included an element in this year’s practice incentive theme where students could opt to leave a “Blessing Card” in the destination they were leaving in order to give the next arriving student an opportunity to earn extra coins. This has been a huge […]
Recording Piano Practice with Fruits
One unexpected way that I often see my students’ personalities come out is in their assignment books. We have a custom assignment book that correlates with our practice incentive theme each year, and one of the elements is that they always have to record what they practiced and on which days in order to keep […]
New Christmas Tunes Bingo and More Music Games!
One of the tried-and-true games in our studio is Music Bingo. It’s a simple game that works for students of all ages and levels and effectively reinforces musical terms and symbols. I often pull it out for group classes. A while back I began pondering the possibility of creating a Bingo game that would help […]
How to Give Your Students’ Note Reading a Super Boost – A Giveaway!
With the plethora of piano teaching resources constantly hitting the market it’s easy to let old favorites slip to the wayside when exploring new possibilities. I’m sorry to say that’s exactly what happened with Notebusters, a fabulous workbook created by Steven Gross and Karen Spurney. It’s been 10 years since I reviewed their original workbook […]
