March Break Piano Challenge

1 week to go!!  I am totally ready for March Break to be here.  Don't get me wrong, I love my students and I love working hard for them but it seems like a long time since the Christmas holidays and I am excited for the time off :-)

I am always looking for fun ways to teach piano... I often play games, do worksheets and encourage practice in a variety of ways so that the kids can truly find something that works for them and means that they enjoy playing as well as learn from it.    In teaching my main aim is for children to learn to love music, not only the specific pieces and techniques, but to develop an overall passion for music.

With March Break coming up, this year I have 1 complete week off teaching (yey!) and then in addition to this many of my students have an extended break from school and will not be having lessons for 2 weeks.  So once I have seen my students this week, it might be 3 weeks before we have a lesson again... seems like a long time!

I was thinking back to when I was a kid and when the libraries used to run reading challenges in the Summer holidays.  I loved to read and finishing x number of books per Summer break was never a problem for me, but I did love filling in the book titles, mark out of 10 I gave each one for it on the challenge sheet!

That was my inspiration for the piano challenge I have put together for my students.

I decided on a 14 day challenge filled with different ways to encourage playing over the break.  Picking favourite songs, a couple of performances, revising old/easy songs, improvising and composing a new ending to a song, playing in pyjamas, playing in the dark, switching hands etc... On one day they even have a challenge to teach their parents a song!!

If they complete the challenges, there will of course be a tasty treat for them at their first lesson back after the break :-)

I included a note to parents (mainly for the parents I don't see) to explain it, and hopefully get them on board in encouraging their children to enjoy playing and completing the challenge!

Thanks to Joy at Color In My Piano for your post showing me these great musical fonts I used for the title.

I also ordered these music chocolate lollipop molds from Amazon to have some fun with over March Break and get them ready for everybody who deserves one!  I'll be sure to add some photos of this when they're done in a couple of weeks.

Please feel free to download the PDF for the March Break challenge, let me know if you need it to read 'Spring Break', 14-day challenge or something else - I'll likely be making a more general one soon anyway but for now, March Break is coming :-D

Have a great last few days before the break (if you get one?!) - let me know what musical or crafty things you'll be getting up to in March ♫

♥ Valentine's Day Piano Worksheets ♥

Valentine's Day is coming and starting tomorrow afternoon I will be taking along my musical Valentine's Day worksheets for all of my piano students along with a little pencil for them to use and keep!

I wanted to give them a little treat but also develop some of my own worksheets this year.  I started off with my Composer Love Stories - telling them stories about composers, their wives, children, songs they wrote for them and then also mentioned some things about the 'Romantic' Period of music of course!  To finish off this worksheet I did a little matching quiz to check to see if they really had read it all.  Then I realised I needed more.  A worksheet or two that would also be suitable for my much younger students!  A Love Story to write, and you'll see I suggested they write it about music, or from their piano's perspective because really, which 6 year old will tell their piano teacher which boy they love at school?!  And then finally, for all of the students that need quizzing on their notes on the staff, they can fill them in on the Love Note Staff Hunt hearts.

For Composer Valentine Love Stories just click for the PDF!

Valentine's Day Piano Love Song (Click for PDF) 

Love Note Staff Hunt (Click for PDF)

I bundled it all together, added a heart I cut out from music scrapbook paper, holes punched on either side and a pencil slotted through so it holds together.  I used just curling ribbon we had a large roll of to tie it all together.

Just a little note:  I purposefully do my documents in black and white only.  I LOVE everybody's worksheets in colour, they look amazing, but for little piano teacher me trying not to print like crazy all the time I thought it would be good to stick to black and white for my worksheets this time (as my printer just ran off 75 sheets for this week!)... And well, my students love to colour anyway :-)

For when I am printing in colour (and I do that a lot too!) here is a great list of printer cost saving tips from amazing piano blogger Susan Paradis with her latest blog post - just click here!

I think we'll be having a lot of fun with it this week, please feel free to download these documents and let me know how you used them too!

♫ Happy Musical Valentine's Day ♫

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! ♫