mission: music

And the winner is......................Hayley!!   This girl is brillant.  She strategically raced around the world and completed all her practicing challenges, made musical artwork, created a super fun theory game and composed a song with lyrics.  She went months without missing a day of piano practice.  

It was very exciting for me to give her the 1st place award at our spring recital.  She deserved the recognition and I was so proud of her!.  Winning this amazing piano race shows in her piano playing.  She is progressing at an excellent pace.  Congrats to her!!

lovely piano hands

I was happy to see that this was a senior picture for one of my piano students. How beautiful is this?

how about a round of grand staff twister?

I got this idea spur of the moment and it has been a huge hit among my students. I took a pretty good sized rug (not too large that it takes up a ton of room and not too small that we can't have some fun with it) I placed black electrical tape on the rug to form the grand staff. I printed off my bass and treble clefs.... and VOILA a grand staff appeared.

My first week with my rug, I had it turned over so that no one would even know that there was a grand staff under there. Then I would tell my students that we were going to play a game with the magic red rug. This always intrigues students especially when they say, "What does a rug have to do with the piano?" I flip the rug over and ask my students what it looks like. After they figure out that it looks like the grand staff I have them place the clefs in the correct places. After all this awesomeness then let the grand staff games begin!!!

My favorite game so far that I have created on the grand staff rug is none other then "grand staff twister" My students always LOVE this game!! It is best to play with two students on my smaller rug. I call out a right foot or left hand along with a letter from the musical alphabet. Since there is usually more then one "A" on the grand staff my students have to get to one of them first before the other. (There cannot be two different right hands on the same note)

I twist my students up real good and I get to see how fast and clever they are with the note names. It is a blast (:

white board love

It always makes me happy to read that my students deep down truly love coming to piano lessons. It is my goal and mission to see that my students remember loving their piano learning experience. After a lesson I found this written on my white board:

gathering around the piano

A mother just told me over the phone that her three daughters were doing so well at the piano. She told me that they LOVE to practice and will sometimes do it more than once a day!! She went on to say how much she loves to see her girls gather around the piano and sing while another plays. This brought such a smile to my face. If I can teach a child to love the piano then I feel successful.

bugle boys

Who doesn't want to see more of this amazing little girl?? She has this internal tempo skill going for her that will take her so far. She also can read notes like a champ and sometimes will even rewrite songs to fit her style and taste (: I love her creativity and take on music!!

an awesome piano player and cheerleader

I love how teaching piano is always filled with surprises. This awesome student of mine surprised me today with this:

It makes me really happy to see my piano students excited to have their lesson and even more excited to perform for me. I support this awesomeness 100%. I love it when my students learn the music as it is written on the staff and then I love it when they take their own twist on it. Everyone hears and interprets music differently bringing with them their own style of music. Watch it again and smile...