I Can Count Rhythm – a Beginning Worksheet

I Can Count Rhythm

Today I am posting the second worksheet in my “I Can” series for young beginners. My last post was I Can Write the Music Alphabet. The one I am posting today reviews rhythm. I think that it is also big enough to use on the iPad.

As with all of my worksheets, this is free for personal use. In order to print, click on the picture or the link below the picture. That will take you to another page, where you will select “download”.

I am working on a worksheet like this for rests, so hold on and I’ll post it this week. Meanwhile, don’t forget these fun rhythm games for the younger set: Quarter Note Hunt, Fish Rhythm Matching Cards,  Rhythm Round About, and Counting Up the Mountain. Average age beginners will learn rhythm values quickly with the black ink Rhythm Memory Game.

If you use all of these games with your beginning students, they will probably learn rhythm note values very easily!

I Can Write the Music Alphabet Worksheet

I Can Write the Music Alphabet

I love to make theory worksheets for my students! Just a little bit of color makes them so much more fun for students.

This worksheet is for beginning students who are learning the music alphabet. I made it with large, easy to read print for younger children. The larger print also makes it possible to use this on your iPad with older beginners who can write smaller. You will have to experiment because pre-children vary a lot in their ability to write on the iPad.

All my printables are free for personal use. In order to print, click on the picture or the link below the picture. That will take you to another page, where you will select “download”.

I am making a series of these larger worksheets for my younger students. I will post more as I have time. I hope you enjoy them!

Funny Thanksgiving Food for Printing/iPad, and Some Sad “Skitch” News

Funny Thanksgiving Food for iPad and/or print

Some time ago I made a worksheet called Funny Thanksgiving Food, and recently I drew a version  to use on the iPad or Android, and it is also a printable. This  worksheet is a review of the notes around middle C. Click on the link above for this colorful version that looks good on a mobile device. However, since it is a PDF so it can be printed, laminated, and used with dry erase markers.

I also significantly updated the print-friendly version below, which has keys instead of notes on the staff.  Funny Thanksgiving Food has been a very popular coloring printable over the years, but I think I draw better now. The coloring version is good to use with younger children at a group lesson while waiting for everyone to show up. What child can resist coloring food all the wrong colors! (I also have a version where the pilgrim has to be colored, which might be useful for parents or a group class. Email me and I’ll send it to you.)

Funny Thanksgiving Food

The mention of the iPad brings up the subject of Skitch, my (used-to-be) favorite app to use with worksheets. Imagine my disappointment a few weeks ago when I discovered the company that bought Skitch, Evernote, has totally revamped the app in version Skitch 2.0, so that it is no longer useful with my students!  As a matter of fact, it has created a lot of resentment and angst among long time Skitch users. You can do a search on the web to read about it. If you have the first version of Skitch, I advise you to keep using it and DO NOT update it! Once you update it, you cannot get the old version back.

I am looking for a replacement app for Skitch that will work in my piano lessons, and when I find one that is as easy as the first version of Skitch, I’ll let you know.  So far I have tried many apps, and none are simple and easy enough for my needs.

All I want is an app to import and open PDF’s from the web, with some easy tools to draw lines and circles on  the PDF.  It should have an eraser without erasing the PDF, and/or an un-do button. There should be a way to clear the screen to start over. It needs to be so easy that even *I* can quickly figure out how to use it. Please leave a comment or email me if you know of one! I’ve tried various PDF reader apps that can be marked with annotations, but none are simple enough for what I am looking for.  I’ve also tried various whiteboard apps and drawing apps. I’m still looking!

I wrote Evernote very politely asking if they could put the first version back in the app store for those of us who use it for education, but they never bothered to reply.

Let’s Play Ball

Let’s Play Ball

I have made a lot of worksheets to help students learn piano keys, but I have not made one for baseball. I have one little guy who just loves the game so I made this for him. In order to save paper and make it more fun for students, I designed it big enough to use on an iPad. If you don’t  want to use this on a mobile device, print it out just as you usually do. Be sure to print in landscape orientation. Don’t try to click on the picture above, because that will just pop up a low resolution image that is only for illustration purposes and it does not look good in print or a mobile device. Click the heading under the picture and it will take you to my website where you can print it.

If you want to try it on a mobile device, here is one easy way to download this into Skitch, a free app for Apple and Android.

Directions for using the Skitch app

1. Using your iPad, open the Skitch app. On the home page there are several icons on the top row. Select “Web.”
2. When the next window opens, there will be a place to type in an address. You will have to open the typing tool. Type in http://www.SusanParadis.com  (do not use the address for this blog)
3. Select “Worksheets” and scroll way, way down the page until you see number SP614, Let’s Play Ball. Select it and then select “Download”. This opens the Let’s Play Ball printable, but you are not going to print it.
4. Turn the iPad to landscape orientation (sideways). Using two fingers, center the graphic exactly like you want it.
5. Click the camera icon on the top left side of the app.  Skitch saves the graphic and places a tiny icon of it on the home page for future use. You cannot change my graphic (other than crop it or zoom in or out), but you can draw or type all over it.
6. Now the student can use the arrow or pencil tool and draw a line from the keyboard to the correct letter.
7. The trash can icon at the bottom of the left hand side will clear the graphic of any marks your student makes so that it will be ready for your next student. The third icon down on the left side is the “send to” tool. You can send it to a parent to show them how much your student is learning!

If you want more info on how to use Skitch, see my 2 posts from this past summer.

Disclosure: I have no connection to Skitch whatsoever, nor does the company know I recommend the app, but I’ve found this one is good for piano lessons. I wanted an app that was easy to use and didn’t take much time to learn, and Skitch is my favorite. Leave a comment if you have a favorite app to use with your students. If you like my printables, please go to my Facebook page Susan Paradis’ Piano Teaching Resources and “like” it!

Finale App for iPad

Finale App for iPad

Make Music, the company that produces Finale, has released a free iPad app called SongBook. You can check it out here at their website. Several months ago they announced it was coming, and I was waiting with anticipation.

I downloaded SongBook last week and it is very handy for me, since Finale is my composing program. I can put any score of the music I compose on my iPad and SongBook will play it. Of course, I can play it myself on the piano, but it’s nice to talk to the student and point to the score as it plays or to be able to play a score for someone away from the piano. SongBook will play back any file or a program from the Finale family, such as the free NotePad program, as long as it has the .MUS extension.

In addition to playing music, you can also use it to save and read any PDF file, such as the ones on my website. It will not play regular PDF files back, obviously! Please don’t download it and expect it to play any score you download from the internet!

However, it is a nice PDF reader if you want to open a PDF score and play it on your instrument, rather than carry around a lot of music books. At this time there is no option to write on the score, an option I would like to see in future updates.

There are some other features such as wireless printing if you have a printer that will work with your iPad, and the ability to extract parts and print them. That would be really handy for a music director at school or worship.

If you have an iPad but don’t have Finale, there are still ways to use this new app without having to buy anything. You can write exercises in NotePad and use them at your lesson. If your students use NotePad to compose like mine do, you can play those back for your students as you both view the score and critique it. Also, you can create ear training examples for your students in NotePad and play them at the lesson.

My students do not find NotePad hard to use, with students as young as 3rd grade using it. One little guy brought me an “orchestra” score that he composed without knowing there was such a thing as concert pitch. That was a learning experience!

Just as computers and cell phones became ubiquitous, so will tablets in a few years!

 

Using Skitch for iPad Part Two

Finger Numbers for Beginners

My last post was a tutorial on how to use the Skitch app with the iPad during music lessons. Above is a worksheet downloaded from my website into Skitch. It is one of the most popular documents on my website, and I recently completely revised the file. (You can click on the link for a printable copy.) I wish I had made the boxes bigger for use with the iPad, but I tell students it’s ok to write outside the box, so it works fine with young students.

This rest of this post is going to show a newbie another educational, but fun way to use Skitch. If you’re already familiar with mobile apps, you probably don’t need this tutorial, but since Skitch doesn’t come with directions as far as I know, this might help some teachers learn a few tricks.

Drawing Notes in Skitch

First open up a music staff in Skitch. You are welcome to use the Skittle Game Board that I made several years ago. I like this one because it has ledger lines. If you want one without ledger lines but with a line for middle C, download Grand Staff for Dimes.  For one with just lines so you can draw clefs, use Large Grand Staff Paper. I’ve been planning on taking down some of these old graphics, but now I’m giving them new life on the iPad! It helps some students focus when there are not other illustrations on the page. Email me if you have any trouble with the downloads.

Once you have the staff in Skitch, use two fingers to make it the size you want it to be. Mine looks like this. Use the picture tool to save the size. Now it is on the home page for future use.

Now we are going to draw a note to use on our staff. Chose a color from the tool bar. Using the slider in the color tool, move the slider toward the left. If you move it to the right, the note will be too thick. Adjust it to the size you like best.

Select the circle tool and draw a note that will fit on the staff. If it’s too big or too small, don’t worry, you can change that in the next step. If you prefer, you can draw your note with the pencil tool, which is a lot easier if you plan to draw quarter notes or eighth notes.

The tool with the pointed finger is the selection tool. Touch it to make it active, and now touch the note you just drew. See the flashing dots? That means it is selected. You can modify your note now. With two fingers, pull out diagonally on the note to make it larger or come in and make it smaller. If the flashing dots disappear, you can touch your note and it will be selected again as long as the selection tool is active.

Now comes the fun part!  With the note selected, you can move it all around the staff. Use your finger to move the note down to bass G and move it up one step at a time. Or move it in spaces so students can learn skipping notes. You can do so many things with a moving note! This is a great tool for learn steps and skips, note names, intervals, etc.

Adding Text

Not only can you draw notes on your staff, but you can add text. Be sure to move the slider over to the largest setting for text. Otherwise, the text will be too small to work with. If your text is big enough, you can grab it and re-size just like we did with the note. When text is too small, it’s impossible to re-size or move around. I don’t think the developer planned on text being used in this way!

You can have all this ready to use before your student arrives so that all you have to do is select the note and let your student move it. But if you draw the note at the lesson, it will only take a few seconds as long as you have practiced before hand.

Use Skitch Anywhere

You can draw in Skitch without a WiFi connection, too. (You need one to download graphics, of course.) Without any internet connection, it only took a minute to draw the staff below. I selected “Blank” on the home page, then used the straight line tool to draw the staff. I drew the treble clef and note with the pencil tool. Skitch automatically saved it on the home page. So if you’re on the plane this summer, you can make all kinds of things for your students!

Don’t forget you can email the parents a worksheet their child does at the piano lesson. So they can keep up with what you are doing at lessons without using paper and ink.

If you buy a stylus for your students to use, I suggest an inexpensive one that is a thick as a pencil. That will be easier for them to handle. My student used his finger for the finger number worksheet at the top. Experiment with the line size.

The possibilities of things to do with moving notes and letters are endless, and I hope that teachers will leave some comments with ideas. (Comments are anonymous.)

A Fast and Simple Way to Use the iPad in Lessons with Skitch

If you are new to the iPad, I want to share the fastest no-fail way I’ve found to download and use graphic activities in piano lessons. Not all worksheets and activities are suitable for use with an iPad, but many are and not only is it more fun, but it saves paper and ink. The picture above shows a students doing rhythmic dictation on the iPad. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will use the Ladybug Board Game graphic that I posted on my website last week.

Download the Free App Skitch

To set this up, you will need to download Skitch., a free app from the iTunes store.   Skitch is not a super complicated app that will do a million things, but it fast and easy to use. Once you have Skitch on your iPad, you can use any graphic from the web in your lessons.

I have tried out many apps to use with my graphics since I was given my iPad, some that I bought and some that are free. In my experience, Skitch is the fastest and easiest to use. In a piano lesson I don’t have a lot of time to fool around with trying to remember how an app works. It has to be as easy as picking up a pencil and paper.

Before Your Student Arrives At the Lesson Set Up Your iPad

1. Using your iPad, open the Skitch app. On the home page there are several icons on the top row. Select “Web.”

2. When next window opens, there will be a place to type in a website or do a Google search. To make it easy for this tutorial, you can click on this link. http://www.susanparadis.com/catalog.php?ID=SP310

3. Select “Download”. This opens my Ladybug Board Game PDF document, just like on your desktop computer.

4. Turn the iPad to Landscape orientation. (You need to do this for any graphic in landscape orientation but not portrait.) Using two fingers, center the graphic exactly like you want to use it. You can make a graphic smaller or larger by zooming in or out. This is one of the reasons I like Skitch.

5. When you have it just like you want it, click the camera icon on the left. Skitch saves the Ladybug picture and puts it on the home page for future use. You cannot change the graphic (other than crop it or zoom in or out), but you can draw or type all over it.

6. Notice now there are a lot of icons on the left side. The Ladybug graphic is saved on the home page of Skitch for you to use in your lessons. It will be there until you delete it.

With Your Student in the Lesson

1. Do not tell your students you are going to play an iPad game. This will confuse them, (especially the younger ones) because iPad games have animation, and all you are going to do is draw on the graphic. I learned this the hard way, with a disappointed little child. (There are plenty of iPad animated games but that is not what this tutorial is about!) I simply tell them we’re going to practice notes or whatever on the iPad. Then they will not expect the ladybugs and bees to fly around and be all let down when they don’t. Sometimes I ask if they want to use paper or iPad. They always choose iPad because it is new and different.

2. Open Skitch and select the previously saved Ladybug graphic from the home page.

3. When it opens, select the colored *dot* on the left and select the size and color. Now select the *pencil* tool. So far it has only taken 20 seconds of lesson time to get ready to use with a student. Practice this before you use it in a lesson and see how long it takes you! That’s all you have to do!

4. To do the activity, use the same directions as the paper board game. Using either keyboard of grand staff flash cards, students select a card and move to the correct letter. Using the pencil tool, the student will cross out the letter he lands on. Use different colors for two or more players. Keep drawing, moving, and crossing out until the student gets to the end.

If you are on the bench, you can play a piano key instead of selecting a card. Be creative! I try to make activities that teachers can use in different ways.

The picture above is a screen shot that I used with my student. He crossed out in green and I used yellow. We find it a lot easier to use a stylus (around $15.00) than drawing with our fingers.

There is no eraser tool in Skitch, but there is an undo tool, and it will go back as much as you need. The garbage can icon will clear the entire board of any writing you have done, but it won’t clear off the Ladybug graphic. The shapes (the circle icon) are difficult for little ones to use, so I prefer the pencil tool. The pointed finger icon is the select tool, and if you select something you draw, you can move it around the board!

What I like about Skitch is that it makes it easy to use any picture on the web that gives you permission to download. You can use a giant staff and draw notes. You can draw a note, select it, and move it around the staff. You can use Skitch’s (typing) keyboard, type in letters, and move the letters around a grand staff. By modifying the rules of your activities, you can think of many ways to use Skitch. On my game, for example, you can draw a little ladybug and move it around the board with your finger. Or you can draw a circle to use as your “token” to move around instead of crossing out letters.

I plan to show you some more graphics that are good for the iPad this summer. In the meantime, check out the beautiful ones by Anne Crosby. (Go to her links section.)  Jennifer Fox has written a lot of ways to use the iPad in piano lessons, so be sure to check out her blog. If you are willing to share your iPad graphics, please let us know!

Leave a comment if you have any questions or if there is something you need help with. Comments are moderated to avoid spam, so it might not show up right away.

Flashnote Derby – a Great App for iPhone and iPad

http://www.FlashnoteDerbyApp.com

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, there is an excellent app available to help students learn note names, Flashnote Derby. After using it for quite a while now, I have decided this is the perfect iPhone or iPad game for piano teachers because it is easy to set up and play and my students love it. Plus, it really works, and makes drilling notes a lot more fun.

Screenshots used with permission

In order to play the game, select the notes you want to work on. You can select one note, or up to 34 notes, shown above. The notes are fun to select. Just touch the notes you want to use and they change color as they are selected. Touch the “gear” icon and you can select how many flash cards you want to use in your game, and the speed they will be shown. Touch the “thumbs up” icon and the race begins. As 2 horses race across the screen, one flash card at a time is shown above the horses. Students select the name of the note at the bottom of the screen. At the end of the game there is an opportunity to review the missed notes. If the student gets enough correct answers, he wins.

For my beginning students I select 2 notes, usually middle C and G, and 10 questions, at the slowest speed. Beginners always win a game this easy and this give them the confidence to want to play more. I add more notes gradually over a period of weeks, often corresponding to the notes they are learning in their method book. It is very easy to change the level of difficulty for the next student.

The horse racing sound track can get annoying, so I often turn the sound off on my device. I wish there was a way to turn off the sound in the game. I also would like a way to start over if I make a mistake when I first select the settings. [Ed:There is a way to start over. I am embarrassed I didn't know it!  This is from Luke Bartolomeo, the developer:

I just wanted to mention that there is a way to stop a race in the middle if you find that you used the wrong settings, or have made the drill to difficult or too easy for a student. Once the race has started, tap the screen on either side of the actual flashcard, but not on the flashcard itself. A red X will appear in the upper left portion of the screen. Tap the X and the drill will immediately stop and return you to the settings screen.

Thanks so much, Luke for clearing this up.]

Flash Note Derby was designed by a music teacher and I think that is why I find it so successful in my studio. The developer emailed me recently with news of an update that features a dozen instructional video lessons about the grand staff, as well as a way for teachers to create custom drills for their students and send them to students by email.

This app works on the iPhone 3 and 4, iPod touch, and iPad. It seems like every student I teach now has at least one of those in the family.

This app is only $.99 in the Apple iTunes store, and at that price it is a real bargain.

You can read more about it at the website:  http//www.FlashnoteDerbyApp.com

Disclosure: I receive no compensation for my reviews and the ideas are my own. The screenshots are used by permission.

Metronome Plus – an iPhone app review

 

Metronome Plus

The iTunes App Store has many metronomes, but until now I have not seen one that I think is really helpful for piano teachers and students. Recently I was introduced to Metronome Plus, and this elegantly designed iPhone metronome is the best I’ve seen. 

A metronome for educational use should be as easy to use as a conventional one. Metronome Plus accomplishes this with a clean, large interface. There are no messy, confusing buttons, and I don’t have to worry about the student waiting patiently while I try to remember how to set it.

The tempo can be changed by touching the large plus and minus signs, or by swiping to the left or right.  An animated graphic swings back and forth helping students stay on the beat. Swipe down from the top and the rest of the settings pop up.  There are just enough settings to be helpful, but not too many to make it hard to use. They are intuitive and can be changed with a touch  Accents, subdivisions, and different sounds can be added if you wish or deselected easily with a touch.  

Previously when I tried an iPhone metronome it was too soft to hear over my students’ playing.  This made me wonder if it was possible to have one that was loud enough for the piano. This metronome  is, and if you want it louder you can add accents to every beat.

Metronome Plus sells for 99 cents in the iTunes app store. I can tell a lot of work went into making it visually appealing and useful. This is the metronome I recommend to students who have an iPhone.  If you have given up hope for an excellent  iPhone  metronome, I suggest you try this one!

Full disclosure: As a piano resource blogger I was gifted this app by the developer.  I receive no compensation for my reviews.