In celebration of the 250th birthday of Mozart this year, I held a special birthday party at my February group class. The only catch was that I didn’t tell the students whose birthday we were celebrating. Throughout the course of the evening, they collected clues and at the end had to figure out whose birthday […]
Group Class Ideas
White Board Messages
Every music teacher needs a white board. My students love writing messages on my white board. Here’s one that showed up today: “I want stay in your lessons till a’m 35 years old” This particular white board is one I picked up at a local teacher supply store. It’s magnetic, 24×36″ and has a grid […]
Students Go Fishing and Have A Turkey Shoot!
Ten students gathered at the studio last Thursday night for our second group class of the semester. With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, it seemed like the perfect theme for this event. We began by discussing how Thanksgiving (defined as “giving thanks”) and music are linked. I read Psalm 137 as a perfect example of how the […]
A Different Approach to Sight-Reading
One of my objectives this summer in my piano camp for elementary students was to build better reading skills. In addition to other activities, I decided to try this different approach to note identification and intervallic playing. I emphasized using Cs as landmark notes and then playing intervals from those landmarks. (This is not geared […]
Group Class Ice Breaker Game
Here’s a fun “get-to-know-you” game I’ve used at numerous group classes. I just change the statements in the boxes based on the makeup of the group. In each box is a statement with a line below it. When the signal is given, the students must find others who can sign their name in a box, […]
Instrument Riddles
Here are some cleverly written instrument riddles I came across on this website. (The website has a bunch of useable ideas related to instruments of the orchestra, but you have to sift through a pretty random layout to find specific ideas.) #1 We come as a pair, you could say that we’re twins. We’re shiny […]
