Mercy excitedly displays the Odwalla smoothie she earned by making it to the Jungle Juice Hut as part of our Jungle Expedition practice incentive theme this year! I am impressed at the incredible effort students have been putting in this year to earn tickets and gain admission to various jungle huts. The number one […]
Teaching
A Fun Memorization Game for Piano Students
Have you ever had students completely blow the performance of a piece that they’ve played numerous times without a glitch? Or have you ever been that performer? I raise my hand. Learning how to memorize cognitively has made all the difference for me, and I’ve used it over and over again to help students (even […]
Diligence is Quite a Virtue…
…working hard will never hurt you; when you’re through there’s always a reward.” So go the lyrics of the “Work Song” from the record “Antshillvania” that I remember listening to over and over as a child. These words came to mind the other day as I was working with my kids on our Latin exercises. […]
A Fun Group Piano Class Rhythm Game
The last week of each month I hold a 1-hour group class in addition to the regular lessons for that week. This gives the students an opportunity to perform for each other, participate in ensembles, and play a variety of games to help reinforce musical concepts. Since one of our primary focuses this year is […]
Celebrating 10 Years of Blogging at Music Matters Blog!
In doing some back-end work on the blog today, I had a little flashback and realized that it’s been 10 years this month since I first launched Music Matters Blog! My how the world of music education has changed since then! I distinctly remember my trepidation at starting a blog and wondering if I would […]
A Simple and Fun Rhythm Activity for the Piano Lesson
Since one of my main objectives this year is to help my students master rhythm skills, we are finding a variety of ways at each lesson to help students decipher, play, and notate rhythms accurately. Here’s a fun multi-sensory rhythm activity we tried this week that was very effective! This is adapted from Have a […]
