Yesterday was Labor Day here in the United States and that means we did not have piano lessons. Knowing that the holiday was coming I gave my students more than enough material to work on for two weeks. Experience has taught me, though, that they probably won’t work diligently for the whole two weeks. In fact, they may even come back with a list of reasons why they did not have time to do it. I’m hoping that this won’t be the case this year because within the next day or so these students will be receiving a special piano challenge from me in the mail!

The most important aspect of this challenge is that it is coming through the postal service. Kids LOVE getting mail! Why? Because they never get any! Unlike the piano notebook, they WILL read mail that is delivered to their home. Their parents will probably read it too!

Now to the challenge – Using free printable Major Minor match cards from Anne Crosby Gaudet at http://pianoanne.blogspot.com/p/free-printables.html, I created an assignment and attached it to the back of one of the cards.

Next, I wrote a short note to my student explaining the challenge and stating how much I’m looking forward to the next lesson:

This final step is important – Address the envelope to the student, not the parent!

Now, I get to wait and see what happens…

If you are interested in an idea to get students to look inside their piano notebook every night, check out my previous post on Mystery Assignments.