Five Little Pumpkins Pre-reading

Five Little Pumpkins

One of my beginning students knows this song, but he hasn’t learned to read on the staff yet. He saw the “on-the-staff” version and I could see in his eyes that he really wanted to play it. To give him a little treat, I wrote this pre-reading version.  Before you print it out for your students, please make sure they are old enough to follow the notes on the page.  This is longer than most pre-reading music and I didn’t want to make two pages, so there are a lot of notes packed into one page.

If  you want to use this with a student, here are my suggestions.

1. Sing the song together for several weeks so that your student knows it. Tap it out on the fall board. Do motions with it. Use rhythm instruments. Trust me, if they don’t know this song, it is going to be difficult to follow on the page. Remember, I wrote this out for a child who can already sing it.

2. When he knows the song, you are ready to teach it on the piano. I broke it into 2 lessons and only worked on the first four lines the first week. 

3. Young students will have LOTS of trouble  following all the repeated notes. All the quarter notes are really supposed to be eighth notes, of course, and there is a reason repeated eighth notes are beamed! So get out your trusty pointer and point to the notes to help the student follow the score.

4. Of course, some of the students are capable of playing this by ear, or partly by ear, so go for it! The days where piano teachers didn’t want students to learn to play by ear are over, thank goodness.  That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t learn their notes, but nowadays we want a balanced approach.  

This is a pre-school song, so your older elementary students will find it babyish. Go with your instincts. If you want the on-the-staff version I posted last year, here is the link.

For all the teachers who are curious about the artwork, I drew the pumpkins and grass in PhotoShop. I wrote the notes in Finale and imported the score into Photoshop where I changed the color of the notes and added finger numbers.

Ask a Composer Questions

At Compose/Create, a blog I read a lot, the wonderful piano composer Kevin Costely is being  featured.  There is a lot of biographical information about Dr. Costley, an interview with him,  and a review of some of his pieces.

This is a great way for your students to connect with a composer. My students have submitted a lot of questions for Dr. Costley. It has given us a chance to talk a little about composing and to get to know my students better.

One of my students’ favorite is Mighty Eagle. You can actually listen to Mighty Eagle at the FJH Website. Click here and scroll down the page to find Mighty Eagle. There you can see the link to listen to it. It is a dramatic piece that really catches the imagination and makes students sound very impressive! Both boys and girls like it, especially middle school age students.  

You have to get your questions in by Oct. 6, so start asking your students today. There are so many resources available to us as teachers. If Dr. Costley and Wendy are willing to spend some time making this available, lets support their efforts.  All of our composers are so busy, it is hard to find time to feature this kind of direct involvement.

Invert These Triads

Invert These Triads!

Now that your students have used  my funny posters to learn how  to invert triads,  they need a worksheet to try it themselves. I agreed, plus I love to draw these things. I am very attached to my NoteBoys™, although, I have to admit some of my younger students don’t “get” it. My middle school and older students love them.

I suggest you laminate this worksheet so students can practice drawing more than once. Younger students or students who have difficulty with the concept can use colored dry erase markers. I found a nice set with felt erasers at WalMart.

What are some of the more difficult music theory concepts that the NoteBoys can help by using humor to get the idea across to students? Send me an email if you have any ideas. Thanks to Wendy at Compose/Create for this idea!

Inverting triads in the bass clef

Inverting Triads in the Bass Clef 

Back in March I posted a humorous poster to teach students how to invert triads.  If we use color, we find that students understand the concept a lot better because they can see the notes move up and can understand inversions better.  I like to use humor  because when students later “forget”, and they usually do, I remind them about the NoteBoys  and  it all comes back to them. When they have a piece with inversions and are having trouble, I pull out these posters.  Also they have to learn inversions for the Texas Theory Test and these help with that, too.  

 Wendy, from ComposeCreate , suggested I post another design in the same series with the triads in the bass clef. If you use both posters with a student, you can show them how the fingering is different in each clef. You can ask the students to write in the fingering on each post and they are more likely to remember it.

In my studio, these posters are laminated and are sometimes on the table so the students can read them while they wait. This way they sometimes they learn about inversions before I formally introduce them. I also have some fine point dry erase markers and ask the students to write in the fingering. This way I don’t have to use so much printer ink and paper.  Besides, they look so nice when they are laminated.

You might have to try several dry erase markers to find one that erases well on your laminated sheets. I use some very inexpensive ones with little felt erasers that work perfectly.

 To print this new poster, click on the link under the picture above and when you get to the next window,  select download.

You can find the PDF for the March post here. Another poster in the series is here.

Win a set of Wendy’s new hymn books

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might have read about my review of Wendy’s new series of traditional hymns. The music is really nice. Hal Leonard put a few selections on the promotional CD they just out to music teachers.

Well, Wendy is running a contest to give away all 3 books, worth almost $30.00.  If you post a comment on her blog you will be entered to win all three books. You can also blog or tweet about it and you will be entered again. Go to her website ComposeCreate to enter. 

If you have a blog, write about it and you will be entered, too. Hurry, the contest ends midnight, Sept. 18th.

If you win, let me know!

Some organizing help

 

If you read this blog often, you know I am a big fan of Wendy Stevens, who composes, teaches, and maintains the website ComposeCreate.com  I have reviewed several of her books and pieces.

Well, Wendy likes to use the material that I post here as well as make her own graphics and worksheets. The  reason I mention them is because Wendy sent me some pictures of how she has organized the fish cards I’ve been posting. She gave me the great idea to put the cards in groups, so we can easily use just the ones we need with each student. That will save me a lot of time sorting through all the cards to pull out the ones I need. The students who might enjoy this game the most are probably too young to know all the notes, anyway. She put them in zip lock baggies and them made nice size labels with instructions. Check out her website if you are looking for more cute games, too. Go to the tab for Wendy’s Piano Studio and there will be a menu of her game ideas with pictures,  flash cards you can print out, and all kinds of teaching things.

New Fish Rhythm Matching Cards

 Fish Rhythm Cards 

To those uninitiated to the joys of fish flash cards, these may look just like all the other’s I’ve posted. But they’re not! 

Use these cards with the fish cards with the rhythm symbols on them that I have already posted. Students will “catch” these fish and match the numbers with the rhythm notes. This is a fun way for beginning students to enjoy the fishing games. I guess we are keeping the color ink companies in business, LOL.

Don’t forget to see if you can find a cute fishing pole at the dollar store. If not, the students like the handmade ones, too. Or don’t bother to use a fishing pole if you don’t have time. Just play matching games. Check out this post if you want to know more about fishing flash cards.

Happy fishing!

Composing articles by Wendy

Rhythm Memory Game

If you want to read about some great ideas and ways to get your students composing, go to Wendy’s site and read up about composing with students.  Not only is she a wonderful composer, but she actually does everything she writes about so you know they are student tested and you can actually use her ideas with your students.  She also writes in a way that is easy to understand, which I don’t always seem to be able to do!

She has many blog posts on how to teach composition to students, including questions from her workshops. If  you are not quite sure about how to incorporate composition into an already busy lesson, use some of the tips she posts.

The picture in my post today is one of my young students learning by playing a game. When you make a game of something, students really learn and remember!

Piano lessons “just for fun” continued

My Practice Incentive

In my last post I wrote about parents who want their children to take piano “just for fun.” While I agree that most parents, including me, want piano to be fun, there are some downfalls in that attitude.

1. Parents may think it is not necessary to make a child practice if piano is just taken for fun.
2. Most children will not practice without parental oversight.
3. When students don’t practice, piano lessons can become unbearable and definitely not fun.
4. If lessons aren’t fun because the child hasn’t practiced, piano isn’t fun and the child begs to quit.

Of course, all potential piano parents aren’t this way. Most parents know the value of practice and will do their best to help the child find practice time. But occasionally I run into a parent who says they don’t really care about making progress, they just want piano to be fun.

Educate the Parents

First, a teacher must educate the parents at the interview in ways that the parents can understand and relate to. From the very beginning we should pleasantly remind parents  they will have the responsibility to make sure their child practices. If they are not ready for that responsibility, then maybe it is not the right time to start piano. The teacher must carefully explain that taking piano will not be fun if the child does not practice.

The teacher needs to explain that children will not practice piano on their own and it is very unrealistic to expect that from anyone under 13 year old for extended periods of time.

You can explain that in school music programs such as band, students are graded on their practice. That is a powerful incentive and will motivate many students to practice on their own. However, private piano is not a school subject and it will be put  behind everything else if the parents do not make it a priority. Parents can relate to this because they can remember the powerful incentive grades hold over students.

Teachers need to remind the parents how uncomfortable unprepared lessons can be in a way the parents understand.

“What if your child is given a part in a movie with her favorite star. She is so excited! This is going to be so much fun. She only has to learn her lines for the day. Of course you will sit down and help her go over her lines. When the big day comes she is ready and does a great job. She loves acting!”

“But what if she doesn’t learn her lines. Things are uncomfortable, she flounders around, and she is terribly embarrassed. The fun day turns out to be miserable. Your child tells you she never wants to be an actor. It’s not fun.”

If you explain it that way, maybe your parents will not want to put their child in an unprepared lesson week after week.  While this seems obvious to us, many parents never think of how the child feels when she can’t do anything in her lesson. There is nothing fun about it.

There are other things you can go over with the parents in an interview. I have read about famous pianists who, to this day, thank their parents for making sure they practiced daily.  Some parents are surprised to find out that many great pianists also played soccer and other activities and didn’t always want to practice. Many say they wanted to do anything but practice until years later when they became serious about music.

I have heard parents say that practicing is between the teacher and the student and they are not going to get involved. Parents need to be told that the piano teacher has no control on getting the child to practice and even short practice sessions are better than none.  

Finally, the teacher should mention  the studies that show the benefits of early musical training. To make the most of these benefits, the child should be making progress and learning new things. If a child does not practice she will not make progress, she will not have fun, and she will be another one of the children who started piano for a while and quit. The benefits of piano study assume that the child is learning new things and new ways of thinking.

Teachers have to be sympathetic with trying to fit practice into a busy schedule, but that is another topic entirely.

Piano teachers can help the parents understand that piano will be fun if the student is prepared and moving along in a progressive fashion. If we can get the message across in a positive, friendly and enthusiastic manner before the first lesson, we will go a long way in keeping more students in piano and bringing more musical joy to the families in our community.

Can a child take piano just for fun…and really learn to read music?

Mouse Notes by Lauren

Sometimes we hear parents say that they don’t mind if their child does not progress much in piano. They just want her to be exposed to music and have fun.

Those are worthy goals. Nowadays, with school districts cutting back or watering down music programs and with a large number of children being home schooled, parents see a real need for a good fundamental music education program for their children so they will learn to enjoy music.

When my own children took piano, if pressed, I would have to agree that I wanted my children to be exposed to music and to have fun.

So what is the hidden negative of that train of thought?

 It is pretty obvious to piano teachers. With that attitude, parents often do not find the time in the day for a quality practice session, no matter how short that session may be. Because practice sometimes is not fun, and if getting the child to the piano is not fun, then piano is not fun, so no practice occurs. Then the child goes to the lesson unprepared and the lesson is painful, embarrassing, and definitely not fun.

The child usually starts off loving piano. From the child’s point of view, beginning lessons ARE  fun. The pieces are easy, there are games, fun improvisation activities, composing, incentive programs, and a loving adult, the piano teacher, who devotes an entire 30 to 45 minutes to you and you alone. What else can a child do with such potential rewards?

This lasts about a month and then reality sets in. There are things to remember, pesky things that the teacher keeps asking.

What are whole notes, what is the different in a whole rest and a half rest, how do I remember the names off all those notes, they all look the same to me. Why do I keep playing finger 2 for 4? Why is the thumb a finger? Do other kids learn all these words? Why can’t I? I must be dumb. Why does the teacher keep asking me to count out load while I play? That is so embarrassing. She wants me to play and sing. I CAN’T do that. I would if I could. It’s hard and I can’t do it, yet she keeps making me. I’m frustrated. This is NOT fun. Why did I think piano would be fun. Mom said it would be fun.

The child has a great ability to put piano out of their mind for a week. Then lesson day comes and the child suddenly realizes how uncomfortable she is going to be, sitting there not being able to play anything and making all kinds of terrible mistakes.

“This is worse than I thought”, the child thinks.

Yet, week after week the same uncomfortable thing occurs because the child is not old enough to have the emotional intelligence to plan ahead for the lesson. If the child would spend a short time a day at the piano, he would gradually learn to do all the hard things. But once he gets behind, just like in Math class, every difficult thing is compounded and soon the child can’t do anything. At least in the child’s mind he can’t do anything. And the teacher keeps turning the page and the pieces keep getting harder and harder. Or else, the page never gets turned and the child is on the same piece for 6 weeks.

“I hate this song“, the child thinks.

And Mom is too busy working, car pooling, taking children to activities, doing homework, and all the other things in life, that piano practice does not happen. Besides, who wants their child to sit at the piano and fuss and cry?

Then lesson day occurs and the child gets THE LECTURE from the teacher to practice, and THE LECTURE from Mom in the car. (I’ve given a few car lectures in my day and I’m not proud of that.)

“This is not fun, this is not fun“,  the child keeps thinking.

 “I want to quit.”

 To be continued.

Three Halloween Pre-reading Sheets

Once a Year On Halloween

 

Halloween Is Almost Here

Halloween, Halloween

A few months ago I took these off my website because I wanted to fix them up, change some things around, and add key names over the rhythm notes. Well, I’ve finished them and here they are! These were a big hit with my students last year. If you have some beginning students who like to play Halloween pieces, try them out! I also have versions of these “on the staff” if your student is past the pre-reading stage. You can get them on my website.

I had every intention of adding teacher duets, but I just have not had time. So this will give you a good chance to improvise, if you’re not inclined to do that. Just play some perfect 5ths in the right key, and before long you will be making up your own teacher duet!

To print these,  click on the titles which will take you to my website. From there click “Download”.  They are free for you to print out  for your students to enjoy.