Keyboard Labels

 

The other day I was drawing a tiny keyboard on my younger student’s assignment book and I had her draw  dots on the correct keys. As we worked together looking for whole and half steps,  I casually said that my drawing was kind of sloppy, and it would be a lot easier to read and more fun if I had some keyboard stickers. So I sat down at my computer and designed some!  Actually they were easy to make because I’ve been designing my own labels for years and I drew the keyboard about 10 years ago.  You probably recognize it from my pre-reading solos and my picture scales! However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this, so for your whole and half step pleasure, I’m offering  Keyboard Labels.  Please let me know what you think!

Now all I have to do is peal one off and stick it in my student’s assignment book. This will give students a  handy reference,  plus it will encourage them to look in their assignment book.  

I used Avery White Address labels, product number 8160. I printed my labels directly from the PDF I’m posting here and my graphic fitted on the labels  perfectly, so I hope you have the same luck. In case you can’t find this particular Avery product, the label  size is 1″  x  2  5/8″ and there are 30 labels on each page. Before you print on your label sheet, try printing on a regular sheet of paper and hold it up to light to see if it aligns with your particular labels. I’m posting a picture of one of the sample ones I made.   Your copy will not have the green border because it didn’t seem necessary.

Cards for Bean Bag Toss Game

Cecilly sent me a game that she made up for beginning students who are just learning the keys on the piano and she wanted to get them away from the piano with an off the bench activity. Yesterday I posted the floor keyboard, and today I am posting the Cards for the Bean Bag Toss Game. As I read the directions to this game, I decided that there are a lot of ways to use a floor keyboard, so that is why I made one and posted it yesterday. You might notice that she specifically made the game for middle C position, but I included all the music alphabet in order to use the cards for different activities. I have already posted alphabet cards, but they are in all different colors. This set uses two colors, because in her game, one color is the RH and the other color is the LH. So enjoy the game with Cecilly’s directions below, or make up your own.

  I included an H in the cards for the European teachers who like to print out material but use an H in place of the letter B. I also included a sharp and flat because I just hate to leave an empty space!

Over the weekend I am going to post alphabet cards with sharps and flats on them so the game can be played with more advanced students.

Here are Cecilly’s instructions in blue print:

Middle C Position BeanBag Toss Game

 Something I did today with my beginner to help
reinforce both the names of the white keys and the letter names of
the middle C position is a little tossing game…

I placed 2 sets of letter cards face down on the floor. Set one was in one color and included the middle C position letters for the RH (CDEFT). The other set was in a different color and included the LH (CBAGF). I also placed my movable paper floor keyboard on the floor.

My student tossed a beanbag to the letters. He took the letter card he
landed on and then placed that letter on its corresponding key on
the floor keyboard. The color determined the correct placement of
course. I had a C in each color since middle C is used in both hands.

My student seemed to enjoy the activity which was followed up immediately with the theory page that will require him to name the keys in the middle C position.

 

 

 I appreciate all your comments on my blog, but I would like to point out that Cecilly is the very creative teacher who has supplied us with a lot of the *off the bench* game ideas I post. I try to make it clear when the game is her idea. All I do is make the graphics to her games. You can find all of the games from Cecilly in the Cecilly’s Game category section on the right.

Thoughts on Composing Activities

I gave some of my students the option of doing the Shamrock Composing Activity that I posted yesterday. Since they had all done the Valentine composing activity, and the Christmas Train, I thought maybe they would decline. However, they were enthusiastic about it so we gave it a try.   Young children love doing the same thing over and over. That is how they gain confidence and why, the younger the child, the more material you need.  Eventually they do want to move on, which is why I asked them if they were interested.

I noticed that the students who have been using my composing activities this year are getting a lot better at composing. They all knew it would sound good to start and end on the key note, although I just called it the 5-finger scale.  One student wanted to write her piece in one of the new pentascales she had learned, and was very proud she added the sharps on her own. She is a beginning student and hasn’t even learned sharps in her lesson book, but has seen them in the games we’ve been playing.

Another student wasn’t quite sure he wanted to do it. He said the Valentine song he wrote was too hard to play. In that piece his notes were all over the place, leaping from top to bottom. This time I suggested he write only steps and repeated notes, no skips. He  is a very young student and hasn’t really learned how to play skips. This time he stepped up and down,  like his 5-finger scales and discovered how much easier it was. He liked this piece a lot better  because he can play it with ease.  He was having a little trouble with the ending, so I suggested 3 different endings to help him out, and he had very definite ideas about what he thought sounded good. I think it is perfectly acceptable to help the students out with ideas, because that’s how they are going to learn. It was also interesting that each student wrote the top line for the Right Hand and the bottom line for the Left Hand.

The first time I did a composing activity with these students in the fall,  it seemed to take forever. Now they know what they are doing and are quicker. They are also enjoying themselves more. I’m getting better at directing them, too.  I’m also excited that if I follow through on these composing activities I might have more composers in my studio. It really makes music come alive, to write your own.

After using the Shamrock Composing Activity with my students, I decided I needed to re-do it, so if you print it out today you will notice some differences from the previous post.   First, I fixed the font so the Celtic “D” doesn’t look like an “O”. I added some dots on the “i’s” and did a few other alterations to the font. Next time I’m not going to get *fancy* with  fonts for little children. I also made the shamrocks lighter so that students could actually see what they wrote. On the old handout, we had to go over each letter with a Sharpie because the shamrocks were too dark to read what they wrote.

The next step, for students who can actually read notes, will be to write their song in musical notation. I’m going to post a handout for that as soon as possible, I hope.

Eventually I want to have a composing activity for all the special days of the year, with a corresponding activity so they can write their song on a staff.

Fishy Scales

Arlene sent me a great idea to keep track of scales, called Fishy Scales. I already had these fish drawn, so for her idea, I just drew in the “fish scales” and the place for the student name. I tried to draw the fish to be easy to cut out, which is why they don’t have a fin at the bottom.

Print, cut out, and laminate one fish for each student. Post the fish on a bulletin board that you have decorated. When a student learns a scale, write it inside the “scale” on the fish. Use a dry erase marker to write on the laminated fish, and you can use them over again each year. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned the clear book covers that I used to laminate my material. Now that I have an inexpensive laminating machine, I don’t have to use that, but I encourage you to try it if you don’t have access to a laminating machine.

I included two colors, in case you want one color for major and one for minor, but that is up to you. You could ask the student to pick the color they want.

If you  teach in your living room or a church sanctuary and you’re not keen on posting fish all over the walls, make a portable bulletin board on foam board and keep it with your music supplies. Sometimes I prop things up on my hearth and remove it when I have company. 

Arlene made a bulletin with had blue paper on it and at the top said “Fishy Scales. ” She put some construction paper seaweed and other sea decor at the bottom of the board. Doesn’t that sound cute?   Here’s the really fun part. When they learned all the assigned scales, she gave them a bag of Swedish Fish!

Thanks so much Arlene for the great idea. I bet there are going to be a lot of “fishy scales” in piano studios this year!

Christmas Train

Christmas Train was one of the most time consuming  activities I have made. I wanted to design and draw  a seasonal composing activity to use with very young beginning students. I wanted them to write in  finger numbers for a melody, with the rhythm and words already done for them. I had a design sketched out by hand, and it was easy. But drawing it on the computer proved to be more difficult. If I had made it straight and not curved the text and train cars, it would have been a lot easier. Musically, I probably should have not used 3/4 time, but my mind was stuck on these words.

Here is how I will use it. Tap the rhythm out while saying the words in a 3 meter, accenting the first beat slightly so they feel the meter.  Tap the first line with the RH and the second line with the LH. I call it the green and red hands to match the train engines. Once they start to compose the melody they can use any 5-finger position but be sure you have them start and end on the tonic. (You can tell them that the first note is home and the  trains start and end at home. The bass line can be exactly the same notes as the treble line, but they will discover the finger numbers are different.  This activity will also give them some more finger number practice.   If young children have trouble playing with finger numbers, you know they are not ready for notes.

I designed this for pre-school and kindergarten children, but you can probably use it with first grader, too. This week, I hope to post another paper to put this melody on the staff.

Writing Finger Numbers for Young Beginners

I am starting some new beginners and I have been busy making some new worksheets. This one is to label the finger numbers on the right and left hands. They will be doing this in their new writing book, but I want to have some exra on hand for group lessons. I also made one for older beginners with the hands turned both ways and no teddy bear. If anyone wants me to post it, send an email or leave a comment. Write the Finger Numbers

5 Line Pre-reading Cards

These cards are in different positions so students can learn to read steps and skips starting on any notes. I have found that when some students try to read by steps and skips, the stems often confuse them. Here they can just concentrate on the note heads. I plan to use these cards with students just learning to read by telling them which hand to use and which finger to start with. The idea is to make it as easy as possible so they will not develop a fear of sight reading. Clever teachers will probably come up with a lot of ideas and games to use with these cards. Please feel free to share your ideas with others.

In order to not have too large a file, these cards have only steps and skips.  I will be posting some different cards in the near future with  a combination of steps and skips.

Picture Scales

I’m trying to post everything that is on my website here, because it is easier to organize material into categories on this blog. I originally made these Five Finger Major Picture Scales for a very young student who was having some trouble reading notes. It was so long ago I can’t even remember who I made it for, but it is one of the most popular downloads on my web site. You can print out just one page or the whole set.  The Minor Five Finger Picture Scales  are also posted on my website,  www.susanparadis.com.

I am a very big fan of learning all the major and minor 5-finger positions because it helps piano students in so many ways: hand position, transposition, theory, ear training; the list goes on and on. I always teach them in the circle of 5ths because later it helps with the theory. After we learn the 5-finger scales we learn cross over arpeggios in all the major and minor keys. Young students love how “big” they sound when they can do that.