Based on my children’s TV watching habits, I sometimes think that the best parts of a TV show are the commercials. I generally use the commercials as a time to go grab a snack or do some other “thing” before the show comes back on. But, not my kids! They’d rather die than miss the commercials. (OK a little bit of exaggeration). The point I’m making though is they live for the commercials. I guess that’s why companies spend so much money on them. So what does this have to do with piano lessons? Well, just like a good TV show, a good Piano Lesson needs some breaks in between scenes (activities). YouTube is so great for finding music education videos that can be used as commercials during lessons. Of course whatever video you choose has to be entertaining! Here is an example of a video that I repurposed as a commercial just yesterday…
Category: creative juices
Spring Time Piano: Take It Outside
Parents and teachers: As the weather gets warmer and days get longer, it’s time to take piano lessons and maybe even practices outside! One fun outside activity for piano is using sidewalk chalk to draw music symbols. You can have students draw them or draw them yourself and have the student identify the symbol as they enter the studio. As other students come to lessons they can name the symbols that were already drawn as well. Of course having a cool treat (like popsicles) or some other prize for “Best Musical Visual Artist” or “Symbol Master” can top off the fun! Check back often for more warm weather piano ideas!
Music From Glasses
Sometimes it can be inspiring for a student to “see” their piece being played in an over the top way!
How The Grinch Stole The Piano Lesson!
At least once a year I try to take my students to a music performance that we can experience together. We’ve gone to the movies, scene STOMP, concerts, and this year we are going to see How The Grinch Stole Christmas presented by Broadway Across America. Since the show is this weekend, I decorated the studio with some Grinch items. All week I waited for the students who were going to the show to mention the decorations but of course no one did!
Here comes the interesting twist – I am one of the few teachers in my area who will give lessons to 4 year olds so I tend to always have some kids this age each year in addition to my older students. Wouldn’t you know that it was one of my 4 year olds who showed up to the lesson and immediately mentioned the Grinch decor. In fact she was completely zoned into the Grinch. This student is usually extremely focussed especially for a 4 year old but truthfully she has a much longer attention span than many of my older students. So, it was very surprising that she just could not focus on anything but the Grinch!
Here I was all ready to continue where we left off in her previous lesson on keyboard note names and the Grinch was threatening to hijack the whole lesson! My student kept asking if we could read the story of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Well not to be undone, I made a deal with her that if she played her concert song for me (we are two weeks from the performance!) and do the note name activity that I’d planned then I would read her the story. Thankfully she agreed to this.
You can be sure that at each step she reminded me that we still needed to read the story. So, finally we got everything done (in about 10 minutes) and it was time to read the story. That’s when I pulled a special out of my “teacher bag of tricks”. I told her that the Grinch wanted her to play a “G” every time she heard his name in the story. She gladly did this, although I could tell that at certain parts of the story she was a little irritated at having to find yet another different “G” to play, but she did not complain because she got such a kick out of my animated reading of the story.
The word “Grinch” came up so many times in the story that I am sure my student will ALWAYS be able to find her “G” note on the piano, and as an added bonus she will have a fun memory to go along with it!
Has any studio prop ever threatened to hijack your piano lesson? I’d love to hear about it!
November 11, 2011
November 11, 2011
Drama For Your Mama!
Every now and then a certain piece from one of the method books just captivates a student and gets their creative juices flowing in extraordinary ways. My daughter experienced this recently during her piano lesson. She is in Level 2A of Faber Piano Adventures and was learning the Detective Agency Song. She really enjoyed the melody and the lyrics. As a big fan of the TV show So Random! she is really into skits. So, she made up a skit to go along with her song. So, I suggested that she make a video. This got her super excited and of course she planned it down to the smallest detail and played the song over and over again on the piano. What more could a piano teacher/mom ask for?
Click here to see her idea brought to life – Detective Agency Song Drama
Kids & Keys 