Monday, March 26, 2012

lovely piano hands


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



Monday, March 5, 2012

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 (: