Key Identification Game

Wow, I am a slacker!  All this teaching at school and working through some issues with my children has taken a huge toll on my creativity and blog time.  I took these pictures back in October, and decided it was high time to get them uploaded. My son, The Rock, was working on identifying key [...]

Musical Alphabet Game

This is my son, whom I will refer to as The Rock.  He is strong and solid in body and mind.  He is also a wonderful cuddle-bug, but at 7 years old, I didn’t think he would appreciate that nickname as much. This week, The Rock is working on the musical alphabet.  We played a [...]

Rhythm Cards in 3 Quarter Time

I have had a couple of requests now to do some rhythm cards in 3 quarter time.  I don’t really feel like folding my laundry, so I thought this was a great time to do them.   Most of the cards only use quarter, half, and dotted half notes, but I threw in a few [...]

Basketball – My Way

This is one of my most popular activities with my piano students – especially my elementary aged boys.  First they pick a card.  Today, we were doing pentascales, so we used the Alphabet Flash Cards.   After a card is drawn, the student runs over to the piano, and playes the pentascale.  We always chant “tonic, [...]

Halloween Games

There has been some great discussion on the Yahoo Piano Teachers list about games for Halloween.  Well, thinking up games is much more fun than completing the homework for the class I need to renew my teaching certificate, so here you are!  The first game is Trick or Treat.  Print off the Pumpkin Rhythm Cards, and place in a [...]

Real Rhythm Cards

I made wood Rhythm Blocks of various lenghts to represent the different note values, and thought some paper ones would be good to have as well.  So I made some, and they have been uselessly sitting on my computer.  Today Cecilly posted a great idea about how to use these rhythm cards on the Yahoo Piano [...]

Rhythm Blocks

I have been wanting to make these for years, ever since I read about them in the book “A Galaxy of Games for the Music Class.” (A WONDERFUL resource, by the way!) They are great for showing the relationships between note values, rhythmic dictation, and are just a lot of fun in general. Here are [...]

Fun Game Ideas

Megan, a piano pedagogy master’s student at Wichita State University, shared some fantastic games. I am excited to try these with my students. Review Cube: I made a giant dice by wrapping a styrofoam cube in paper. For each class I teach, I make 6 cards with the concepts we worked on in that class [...]

Quarter Note Royalty

I was so excited this morning! I have a beginning student that was going to be introduced to quarter notes today. I got everything ready, and waited, and waited…but he didn’t show. I didn’t want to waste the preparation, so I enlisted my daughter to show everyone our incredibly fun and memorable “Introduction to Quarter [...]

Lets Have a Spelling Bee!

This is another of Sharon’s great ideas. I used Natalie’s list of words that can be spelled with the musical alphabet at musicmattersblog.com to make these cards. One side is the word spelled on the staff, and the other side is the word written out. All words are spelled in both clefs. The lines of [...]