Here is the requested pre-reading version of Away In a Manger. I’m not posting this on my website, so be sure to remember to get it here. If you have any trouble downloading it, let me know. It is a pretty big PDF file.
For the new teachers reading this, notice that I did not use the dotted rhythm, even though I made a big deal about how to teach it by rote in the on-the-staff version. That’s because beginners have enough to worry about without seeing something as foreign as a dotted quarter followed by an eighth. By the time students are reading on the staff, they are comfortable with a lot more music symbols. Our pre-reading students can barely figure out what in the world they are doing, especially if they are young. However, if your younger students play it with the dotted rhythm, I suggest you go ahead and let them do it and just not say anything. It’s better to let them play it like they sing it.
If it is an older student, you can mention they’re playing a rhythm that is different. Sometimes I will tell them they are just very advanced because they can play rhythms they haven’t even learned yet! As a teacher, it is so much more important to me to say something positive than to tell them they’re playing something wrong, especially when they know the song.
For those of you who like to know how I do things, I wrote this first in Finale and removed the staff and other symbols. Then I imported it into Photoshop where I added finger numbers, title, LH-RH, the little keyboard, and cleaned it up. This piece was stubborn and it took longer than I thought. The graphic is clip art.
