Worksheet Game for St. Patrick's Day!

Alright... Well there has been a whole lot of baking going on so far this year and not much else!  My sewing machine hasn't made an appearance (although I'm definitely going to rectify that in the next couple of weeks) and there hasn't even been much crafting, beyond a few handmade cards and a small Valentine project for Jonathan... So today, you will NOT be reading about cake!  (Sorry if that's your favourite part), but it's time for something a little different. 

 

This weekend I came up a new worksheet that I'll be using for my piano students during March in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. 

 

 

While I was making it, and thinking of how it would work during my piano lessons, I thought it would be great to keep it general - then anybody can use it!

 

Using PicMonkey for the first time in creating the full worksheet (and then using the image in word, before saving as a PDF!) I used lots of shamrock shapes, with a starting point and 10 small shamrocks before reaching the 'You Win' pot of gold at the end of the line of shamrocks.

 

 

My plan for that pot of gold is to have a chocolate coin to aim for! 



Keeping it simple and generic I just stated that you should 'Follow instructions and move along the shamrocks to make it to your pot of gold at the end of the game'... 

 

Whether instructions are being given by a piano teacher like me, another teacher or parent this worksheet game can be adapted to anything.

 

The PDF is on Google Drive, and anybody with THIS LINK can download and print it as you like (just print on 'Actual Size').  Click here to see it.  If you're looking for a lower colour option, then perhaps printing in 'draft' will save your printing costs :)

 

Like I say, the instructions my piano students will be following are musical ones - I have a few students taking RCM piano exams in April so lots of the instructions will be based on scales, chords, ear testing and sight reading etc in preparation for the technical side of their exam. 

 

For my beginning piano students we'll do some fun challenges - playing high/low.. performing a piece loudly or softly, playing their pentascales... And some other fun ways of playing.

 

In addition to the worksheet, I also created a List of Instructions to print and go along with the worksheet.  You can download this one here - just click THIS link!

 

 

With there being 10 small shamrocks, and then one final step to finally reach the pot of gold finish point I put a Bonus to Finish instruction as well, this might be something fun, or something my student has trouble with - or maybe the point where the student can play their favourite exam piece, or play their Irish piece of music we'll be learning in March ♫

 

I'm sure you'll be able to think of LOTS of ways to use this in your lives - whether as parents or as education providers, but here are a few idea I had so far...

 

Perhaps your child has a spelling test coming up... Can they spell 10 + bonus words correctly in studying for their test!?

 

Or are there some chores your little one needs some motivation with... Maybe there will be a bonus $1 gold coin waiting for them at the end of the list of Shamrock Chores?!

 

Have some fun with homework or learning... Follow instructions to gain a 'gold coin' or other reward that fits with your current reward system!

 

Any other ideas you come up with I'd love to know!!  Just leave me a comment telling me how you enjoyed playing this Shamrock game :-)

 

I'll post some more pictures of the game in use during my piano lessons as we get further into March and play on St. Patrick's Day ♧

 



A February Round Up: Valentine Hearts, Pasta and Truffles

 



Canada Day Piano Style ♫

It's the long weekend wahoo, and Canada Day on Monday which means red and white all over, fireworks and O Canada so I thought I would jump on the maple leaf boat and do something fun with my piano students this week!

Summer lessons have begun, and I like to make these a little different to our regular weekly ones.  Last year I did Piano Olympics, to tie in with the London 2012 Summer Olympics... see that here ...so I have been trying to think of ways to do some fun musical things these coming weeks!

I have decided to do various themed weeks.  As I am still teaching regular 45 minute lessons in their homes it needed to be something to incorporate within this time frame still giving us time to hear practiced songs, learn a new piece and go over some theory or ear training.  So for each week there would be a fun element or new thing to learn :-)

Coming up this week is Canada Day of course!

Every student will learn O Canada, and I have made a note naming maple leaf worksheet for a theory element of the lesson.  And then the best bit!  GAME TIME!  I have been wanting to make my own musical bingo sheets for a while now, and every time I can (and have time) I love to make new worksheets.

One of my own piano teacher aims this year was to come up with my own worksheets to use with my students in their piano lessons.  This way I can create the colours I want, and things specific to my students needs and levels.  However, I have put them into pdf as well so if anybody else wants them you are SO welcome!  I would love that!  I love having fun worksheets and games to use, and since discovering amazing music teacher sites such as Susan Paradis and Color In My Piano I have used a bunch of their great printables, but also had the inspiration to make my own :-)

I'm learning slowly and discovering new and better ways to do this and Joy from Color in My Piano has REALLY been helpful for my Canada Day worksheet and game!  Thank you Joy!  She has a great template, and set of musical symbols that you can download, resize as you need and then use them for what ever project you're working on!

For me this time first up was a note naming worksheet.  Maple leaf style of course!

Here's how it looks!  And get the PDF here ♫

I created it using the blank treble and bass clef staffs from Joy, and then spent FOREVER looking for the perfect maple leaf that would sit on a line or a space blank to fill in the notes.  I'm pretty happy with the one google finally provided me with!!  I also used my favourite music font for the O Canada title... Search for DTNoted and you'll get this great one :-)  

My first students tried it out on Friday, how nice that her red guitar was sat on the table when it was photo time (actually, honestly!). 

Alright, worksheet done - now to devise a game with a Canada Day twist!  My first thoughts were to make a musical bingo to test my student's musical symbol knowledge!  Something I wanted to work on particularly with a few :-P  I was thinking red counters to place on the maple leaf spaces, and then a Canadian treat as a prize. 

With a lot of moving around symbols, a lot of resizing maple leafs and then the realisation I would need more than 1 bingo sheet I was done!

I came up with 3 different sheets... same symbols but in different positions on the table so that the students playing wouldn't get bingo at the same time!  In the PDF (click here!) I also included a blank sheet just in case.

  

I printed the bingo sheets on card stock and didn't yet, but would like to laminate these just to keep them as long as possible.  Instead of marking on each square (maple leaf!) when it is called, I got some red counters (from a dollarstore Connect 4 game) so that it could be reused.  This actually worked really well, then when the game was over they could just move away the counters and re-start.

*** Writing this now, I realise that after each game or 2 the students should have also switched cards so that it was a fresh set of musical symbols in different positions on the sheet - probably they got used to where things were after a few games?! ... Ah well, next week! ***

I read out the musical symbols in a random order, and from the list you see below (might have to click to zoom) marked them off as I said them to keep track, and so that when the game was over we could confirm if I had indeed said them!  A couple of the symbols were unknown to the students I played with on Friday, but one sister taught her other sister what something meant, and then we learnt what 'fermata' was as we went along.  I also made them 'reveal' their completed row, just to check they did in fact know what the symbol was and weren't guessing!

I tried this out with 2 girls on Friday and we had SO MUCH fun!!!!!  We played 8 games of it in all, and by the end each girl had won 4 chocolate dollars each!  Check out the final winning game - I went pretty quickly reading them out and she ended up with 3 complete rows before she realised she had won! 

A lot of fun, and I can't wait to play it with all of my students this week ♫

Happy Canada Day everybody, enjoy the long weekend either this weekend or next if you're celebrating in the States :-) 

...PS I'll be doing some 4th July piano things on Thursday too with my Canadian-American students!  It's going to be a fun week!

♥ 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! ♫