Friday, July 19, 2013

Climbing Piano Mountains




There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say… ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”  Spencer W. Kimball
 
Do you ever have students that avoid the technical skills assigned week after week, or are not so enthused about sight reading or rhythm drills?  Instead of doing my typical Ice Cream Piano Party checklist or Piano Olympics during the summer months, I was inspired to try something new this summer that could be flexible enough to use for all of my students at various levels and add some variety and challenge.  I was thrilled this week when one of my students walked in the door super excited to pass off some rhythm drills to get to the top of his "Rocky Ridge Rhythm Mountains"  while his brother was able to stay on task better than ever beating his Music Ace game scores during piano lab  for "Mount Killamanjaro."
I made this simple Mountains to Climb tracking sheet and slipped it into a sheet protector at the front of each students binder.