Harry Potter Music Challenge ♫

What a crazy day!  I am home now after what has been my most Wintery experience in Toronto ever... and I LOVED it!  Trudging through knee deep snow, it all definitely falling into my boots was totally awesome!  Music classes in the morning, and then back to the same area for piano lessons in the evening.

And that is what brings me to this post's subject!  I had an email from a parent just yesterday telling me her son had been invited to audition for a choir school in the area - great news you might think! Not for the young boy who wasn't sure about this whole 'vocal' audition!  Mum still wanted to see if he might get used to the idea and do the audition so asked for some secret help from me!

She asked if we could work on elements of the audition without him knowing exactly why.  Now some of them were ear training exercises we often do during class anyway so I knew that wouldn't be a problem but the voice specific performances or exercises I felt he may be less inclined to do.

Until Mum mentioned something that just sent ideas whirring.. "If only Harry Potter were in a choir, there would be no problem!  That's why he liked the exam idea, because they have exams at Hogwarts! Sigh..."

And for anybody who knows me also knows I LOVE Harry Potter too so I thought maybe there was something more I could do to introduce some of these exercises in a fun way :-)

I have a bunch of Harry Potter stickers, and the kids LOVE getting stickers especially as part of a challenge so that's where I began.

I came up with 6 challenges, some that were part of the vocal audition process he may go through... Others were performance or improvisation based.

Check out the PDF document here.

Thank you MuggleNet for this awesome insight into Harry's piano playing ability!  Who knew?!

After making and printing these (2 copies this time, as both Harry Potter obsessed brother and sister would be doing the challenge!) I realised what I could do to make this MORE awesome for the kids...

... A HOGWART'S LETTER!!!  Inviting them along to the music challenge the night before to give them something to look forward to in the next lesson.  Luckily their house was on my way home from that evening's piano lesson so this was easy to do - alternatively I thought I could have also asked a parent to print the attachment and leave it for them.

But as I did it myself I was also able to tea-stain the letter (after a nice warm cup of tea of course!) and give it an old letter feel that I'm sure the real Hogwart's letters were like!

Here's the PDF I made for the Hogwart's letter - gaps for name, date, time, location and teacher's name so you can fill them in as needed!  Just click here!

So after an email request, and quickly whipping this together I definitely was getting excited about it!  ...We had a LOT of fun in today's lesson, they all completed their challenges, got their stickers and one of my student's even dressed in her Halloween Harry Potter robe for the challenge!  Loved it!

♫ We'll definitely be doing this challenge again! ♫