Christmas and Seasonal Printables

It’s time for the yearly roundup of  Christmas and seasonal printables from my website.  If you can’t find the directions to some of these games,  do a search or ask in the comment section. To print, click on the picture, which will take you to my website. From there, click on “download” and you will be able to download and print the file.

Snowmen and Reindeer Notes

Snowmen and Reindeer Rhythm

The Snowmen and Reindeer theme  was a new set of Christmas games I designed last year.  My students loved the colorful design. There are cards for the games on my website.

Snowmen and Reindeer Intervals

Ornament Bingo

This is a game for beginners who are learning the names of piano keys.

  Christmas Note Bingo

This year I revised this fast, easy, bingo game. It is easier to read and uses less ink.

Christmas Composing Train

Beginning students write finger numbers or letter names to write their first song.

Christmas Worksheet

Christmas Notes in Random Order

Color the Chanukah Gift

Golden Menorah composing activity

Peppermint Notes

Students can use peppermints as notes or to construct key signatures.

Ornament Notes

This is a black and white printable for students to color the names of notes.

Draw the Ornaments

Students write notes on the grand staff on this printable. To save ink, place it inside a sheet protector or laminate it,  and  use a dry erase or a wet erase pen.

Gingerboy Keys

Light up the Tree

This is a (mostly) black and white printable for students to color notes on a Christmas tree according to the names of notes on the staff. It is similar to Ornament Notes, but different so siblings won’t have the same printable.

Christmas Musical Symbols Vocabulary

Students match music vocabulary to the correct answer.

Christmas Tree Vocabulary Words

This is a quick printable that is fun for group lessons.Students try to find all the music words.

Christmas Tune Challenge

Students love “name that tune” games. I find it very helpful to have a list of carols in plain view that they can choose from. You can list your carols on this printable.

Cards for Silly Sentences

This is a different kind of game for older students at group lessons. My high school students had fun and reviewed some music terms. Be sure to download the sentences found here, and use the easier cards for younger students.

If you are looking for easy Christmas piano music, go here, and scroll way down past all the Halloween music. I have posted many carols in pre-reading notation. Have fun!

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A List of Christmas and Seasonal Printables

Ornament Bingo

I have a new student who is learning the letter names of piano keys. I was looking at my website trying to find something, and I found this game I posted last year. Last year I used green and red M&M’s as the bingo tokens. You can use the alphabet letters from my last post as calling cards.

I’m sorry I don’t have anything new for you today. But I thought I’d list some of my holiday season games here to make it easier for you to find something you might be able to use.  These printables include games for individuals or groups, composing activities for beginners, and worksheets. Some of the links below take you to the original blog post with a link to my website, and some take you directly to my website. Once on my website, click preview to download the item. Directions to the games are found by searching on this blog. Everything is free, but donations to help with running the site are greatly appreciated!  I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all of you who are supporting the site to keep it going as a resource for teachers all over the world. My only goal is to make piano lessons and music theory so much fun that children will love coming to lessons; that they will put their own children in piano so the legacy we love so much will continue.

In addition to the seasonal  games  and worksheets on my website, there are also 16 elementary Christmas songs and carols. I am working on some more carols and adding some more games, so check back.

Christmas Worksheet

Ornament Notes mixed up

Color the Chanukah Gift

Peppermint Notes

Ornament notes

Musical Christmas Lights

Draw the Ornaments

Gingerboy Keys

Light up the Tree

Christmas Musical Symbols Vocabulary

Make your own worksheet

Christmas Train Composing Activity

Christmas Note Bingo

Christmas Tree Vocabulary

Christmas Tune Game

Golden Menorah composing activity

Silly Sentences for Christmas

(be sure to download the cards that go with this)

Christmas Vocabulary Matchup

Music Vocabulary Matchup

If it’s not too late in the season, here is a worksheet for first year students to draw lines to match up vocabulary words and symbols. Sometimes students arrive at group lessons early and it’s a good idea to have something to keep them busy! Or maybe you would like to do something different at the last lesson of the year.

When I drew this red and green border, I intended on making many levels of vocabulary words for all my students.  But I think I got carried away drawing the border and ran out of time!  I was interested in making something seasonal, but suitable for all ages. Maybe next year I can add to the series.

Ornament Bingo

Ornament Bingo

If you are looking for a simple game for beginners for the holidays, you might be interested in this game.

There are four cards in this PDF.  I suggest laminating them if you want to keep them, because home printer ink will smear. The teacher calls out a letter and the students cover it with a bingo token.  Students can win by covering all of one color or row.  Younger children like to play several short games. Older beginners will want to play “black out” and cover all the ornaments.

If you have a few students in your group who are not beginners, make it more difficult for them. Give them a big staff and let them place a token on the staff note as well as the piano key. I have many big staves on my website you can use. There are always ways to make music games more difficult if you think about it.

I used to have some students who had trouble learning piano keys, no matter what cute little ideas I used at the piano. But once I started playing games like this, they learned the keys very quickly. It is a fact that if something is fun, students learn faster. Maria Montessori showed teachers a long time ago that children learn through play.

You know what’s fun for a Christmas group lesson? Instead of using bingo tokens, use green and red M&M’s.

Holiday Worksheets and Activities

I have so much on my website, www.susanparadis.com, that I have trouble keeping up with it. If I posted it and  can’t even remember what I have, it must be really hard for someone new to navigate through all the material I’ve posted over the years. While there is a category on my website for “seasonal” music if you are looking for easy Christmas music to play, there is no seasonal category for my worksheets and games, so you will have to scroll through it all to find things. To help you out, today I am posting a list of worksheets, activities, and games you can use during the Christmas season. Some of this material is really old and needs to be updated, but for now I hope you and your students will forgive some of the wobbly art and odd layouts. All of the links below take you to the original blog post. From there you will have to click on the link to my website and then click on “preview” to download the PDF document.

Ornament notes This is very simple for beginning readers. Students color the ornaments that contain notes around middle C.

 Christmas Worksheet I give these types of sheets to beginning students over and over to help them learn the notes on the staff. It takes a several years for notes to be secure in a student’s long-term memory. Beginning teachers often don’t realize you have to review this constantly.

Ornament Notes mixed up on a staff. Some teachers thought the worksheet above was too easy and asked for one with mixed up notes. Don’t use this with young beginners. It will take the entire lesson!

 

Color the Chanukah Gift We don’t want anyone to be left out when it comes to learning note names. My box is out of perspective, but it gets the job done! This one has hardly been downloaded at all. There is also a Chanukah composing activity on my website.

Peppermint Notes You can use any kind of candy with this one.  I had some peppermints on hand and that’s why I made it. You can play many games with this PDF, however. You can even use magnetic bingo chips and write scales,  chords, and key signatures.  

Musical Christmas Lights This is a game for up to 6 students at the beginning level. Students learn rhythm values and some simple vocabulary words.

Draw the Ornaments This one is a little more challenging than the Ornament Notes above. There are more notes and the entire staff is used.

Gingerboy Keys I made this one for a student who just started lessons right after Thanksgiving. You might have some pre-school students or beginners who can use it.

Light up the Tree I made another note worksheet with more notes than Ornament Notes shown above.  You can pick and choose which one you want to use. This one works well when printed in black and white.

Christmas Tree Music Vocabulary

Christmas Tree Music Vocabulary

The popular NoteBoys are back with a Christmas worksheet to review musical terms. I wanted to get it posted in time for holiday group lessons.

I used a fairly basic music vocabulary and  Christmas words from around the world to make this worksheet.

My middle school students have been asking for more NoteBoy things, so I added them to this worksheet. If you’ve never used any of my NoteBoy posters and worksheets, you might not understand that the green boy is always worried and the red boy  is the smart one in the group.

After I finally finished and made the PDF image, I left out Feliz Navidad. If I do this over, I’ll find a way to put it in as well as some words from Asia.   I have “manger” listed in at least 3 languages. I tried to use some words from  the countries that have a lot of readers of this blog. If I left off your favorites, let me know.

If Christmas words inside a tree looks familiar to you, I got the idea from a Land’s End catalog.  But I thought of the music worksheet and all the words myself. Photoshop helped me draw the rest.

Light Up the Tree

WordPress, the host of this blog, has an interesting announcement. You can now sign up for email notices when there is a new post on my blog. Simply click on “Sign Me Up” on the right side of this page and follow the directions. I have had many teachers email me and ask if there was an easy way to receive email notification for new posts,  and now there is! This is different from the RSS subscription. By the way, I will never use your email address except to reply to a message you send me. I usually post several times a month and more often during certain times. If you get tired of the notifications you can easily unsubscribe. I subscribe to several blogs because sometimes I get busy and forget to check up on the lastest posts.

Light Up the Tree

I have made several coloring sheets for Christmas, but they only had notes around middle C. This one has the notes from bass C to treble C. I might have students color this while they wait on their siblings or use at a group lesson. One of my students didn’t know that Christmas lights could be in color since so many people use clear lights now!

Coming soon will be the same notes with a Chanukah theme. In the meantime, there is a Chanukah composing activity on my website.

Draw the Ornaments

In this worksheet, Draw the Ornaments, the students have to draw the note on the staff instead of just identifying it, as in my other Christmas worksheets. I think it is fun to use different colors, if you have them on hand, but I left that off the instructions to make it more flexible. You can use this at a group lesson while they are waiting for everyone to show up, or for a quiet activity.

If this will be the first time your beginning students have written notes, however, you might want to use pencil because students really seem to have trouble with note placement at first. They have to learn what size to make the note heads, not too large or not too small. Also, so students really have trouble getting the note head right in the middle of the line notes. I tell the students the line goes right through the belly button. .

Musical Christmas Lights

Musical Christmas Lights

This is a bingo type game and students can win by covering three of the same color or you can play “black out”, depending on how much time you have.  There are 6 cards in the set, and you can print them all, or just one or two. The sheet probably has some things your beginning students don’t know such as the natural sign and the 16th note. In that case, for my beginning students, I’m just going to describe what the symbol looks like when I call out the name.  My idea is that if they start hearing the names of some of these symbols,  they will remember them better when they actually get to it.

I  made a sheet of 40 little ornaments with the symbols on it that you can cut out and either use as game pieces, or to draw and call out the symbol.  You can play the game with or without the little game pieces. If you do use these game pieces at a group lesson, be sure and print out enough for all the students.

Yesterday my students really enjoyed Peppermint Notes. I left off the line for Middle C. Did anyone notice? Maybe you can draw it in yourself with a red pen. The train you see in the photo is battery powered and cost $1.00. I let students play with it while they wait and for such a simple toy, they have a lot of fun.  It is what gave me the idea for a Christmas train composing sheet. My philosopy is that young children take piano for the train ride, not for the destination. That’s the opposite of how adults and a lot of teachers look at it. I just love teaching children!

Gingerboy Keys

Gingerboy Keys is is a very fast worksheet so you might want to print two to a page.  I used this yesterday with some beginning students  and they did it fast and seemed to like it.  My new crop of students have learned all the piano keys very quickly this year. I think it is because we played the Cover the Keys game back when they started lessons. It seems like in the past some students have had a lot of trouble remembering the keys. I recall a 5th grade honor student who didn’t know the key names after a year of piano. I think I’m doing a better job of teaching it now!

This worksheet  was fun to make, but I have to confess I didn’t draw the gingerbread boy. My daughter the artist drew it.  The nice thing about Photoshop is that I can recycle all the graphics so you might see Mr. Gingerboy on something else.

Ornament Notes Mixed Up on a Staff

This worksheet is like the one I posted yesterday except the notes are not in order, making it more difficult. When I was young, I used to love pretty colors like this. Maybe I would have learned my notes sooner! Make it fun by letting the student choose which colors to identify.

You can discover a lot about a student by asking questions (assuming you’re using age and music level appropriate material.)  When I show this to a student I’m going to ask if which color ornament they like best. If they won’t make eye contact, mumble something like “none” or “I don’t Know”, you know the student is not enthusiastic about piano lessons. Have you ever had a student say “whatever”?

Then there are those who seem to agonize over which one they like. As you sit waiting and waiting, you want to shout that it’s not a hard question. This could  be a super sensitive or self critical student who is very hard on herself. She is so afraid of the wrong answer that she can’t make a choice. This kind of student can turn a 3 minute worksheet into a 30 minute lesson, so set a time limit. If she can only do 3 notes, that’s fine.

The opposite student may quickly pick out one and start to write the notes before you even give directions.  This student may play with a lot of enthusiasm, but sometimes the details aren’t there. The Mom of this student will tell you that he can do all his practicing in 5 minutes and can you give him some more music to practice.  Trying to keep that enthusiasm going as we make corrections is the hard part of teaching, IMO.

From the emails I received with so many creative ideas from all of you, I am awed at all the wonderful teachers out there who know how to instill the joy of music. I think the sharing of ideas has really benefited today’s piano student.

Christmas Worksheet

Well, I guess I can put my turkey pictures away and start polishing up my Santas. I already have some Christmas themed material ready to be posted, so watch for it in the next week or so.

I would like to encourage teachers who use my  worksheets to sit with the younger students and do it with them. From all the worksheets I publish on this blog, you might think that my students are doing written work and games all the time. That is far from reality, but I do have to adjust my teaching from kindergarten to twelfth grader in a short time span.  Most of the time I work at the piano doing my best to teach musicality.  I’ve noticed that if I don’t use too much written work and if I do it with the students, they enjoy it more. It is also true if you teach very little ones, you need to break up the time. Sitting one-on-one with a worksheet such as the one I’m posting today can be useful for this. Plus, if you are doing it with the student, you can sing as you write. As Georg Telemann said in the 17th century, “Singing is the foundation of music in all things.”

My grandson and I worked this Christmas Worksheet together. He is very young and doesn’t take piano yet. But he loves music, the piano, and can write the alphabet. So together we learned that the music alphabet only has 7 letters and he was delighted to write the letters inside the notes with my help. By the time we got to the treble clef he knew that A comes after G.  We sang as we wrote. He also loved to be able to point to middle C. He proudly showed it to his mother when she came to pick him up. We want our time with our little ones to be joyful and fun.

For those of you who want a “mixed up” version of this worksheet for a student a little further along, I already have made it.  I have one little student that I’m going to sit with as we do it together. I’ll post it soon or send it to you are a PDF if you’ll email me. Also, I have a cute blank staff with peppermint clefs that you can use can use at a group lesson with peppermints as the “notes” that I’ll post in a few days.

Ornament Notes

Today’s post is a Christmas worksheet called Ornament Notes that you can use in December or maybe for a group lesson. It’s in black and white for those of you without color printers. They can color it while they wait for other students to show up. I have a lot of Christmas worksheets and I’ll try to clean them up and post them as soon as possible so you can do some lesson planning for your group lessons.

Thanks again to all of you who have written to tell me how you use some of the things I have posted. It is so gratifying to know that my efforts extend beyond my studio. I love knowing where you are from, so if you print something out, send me a little note. I’m keeping everything.  I have lived and visited a lot of regions and each one is special to me. One of these days, when I retire, I hope to visit all the states.

Today we got the results back from a classical music festival some of my students played in and there were some very nice comments from the judges and some very good scores. I can’t take credit, because I have some of the most dedicated students that I’ve had in a long time.   We worked very hard on musicality and the results were worth it. In particular, a high school student did some difficult quarter pedaling on a piece, and the judge said it was beautiful. The last time we tried quarter pedaling it seemed to confuse the judge, so I marked it this time. I’ve learned to mark things that are a little different. The reason I mention the festival is because if there are any festivals in your area and you do not participate, consider doing so. Nothing will help your studio more. And if there aren’t any, consider getting together with other teachers and having one.

It is so hard being a piano teacher and having so many things to teach in a once a week lesson. There are so many things we need to teach, yet we want them to love and enjoy music. We have to give credit to the students, because without them where would we be?

If any teacher would like some Hanukkah or other December seasonal material, send me an email. I can do that if there is a need.