For the last week of regular lessons this spring (the week before the Year-End Evaluations), I let each student choose whatever he/she wanted to do for the lesson. It was kind of fun to see what they chose! Some opted for a bunch of improvising, some wanted to play through their regular assignments, some wanted […]
Worksheets
A Week of Year-End Evaluations
Eight years ago, I started doing Year-End Evaluations with students and their parents at the last lesson of the spring semester. This has been such a helpful tool! A couple weeks prior to the evaluation, I send home a Student Questionnaire and a Parent Questionnaire. I change the questions a little bit each year based […]
A New Approach to Teaching Thumb Position
At our fifth Briefing Session this year, the theme was “A Galaxy of Theory Concepts for Creative Minds.” Each student had to present a musical concept of their choice. The presentations could be simple or elaborate – basically as creative as the student wanted to be with it. It turned out pretty fun, and I […]
Piano Preschool Lapbooks
While I was perusing Heidi’s blog, I came across this super cool idea! She put together Piano Preschool Lapbooks that include a variety of music flashcards and visual aids. I LOVE these and think that I will add them to the list of ideas to incorporate into the preschool piano camp that I’m putting together […]
Melodic Minor Scale Fingering Diagram Added
For those who missed it, I updated last week’s Free Piano Scale Fingering Diagrams post to include the melodic minor scales. Originally I didn’t create melodic minor scale fingering diagrams because I figured there wouldn’t be much demand for them. So much for that theory! Based on the feedback and requests I’ve received, I went […]
And I thought I knew about all the best places for free teaching resources…
…well I was wrong! As I mentioned yesterday, in looking through some of the websites that teachers sent me, I found some really gems. One in particular merited an immediate subscription to the blog feed and a mental note to come back and peruse in more depth for some specific resources. If you haven’t seen […]