Saturday, April 18, 2015

Creative Activities for Beginning Level Piano Lessons

After over 5 years of blogging, the posts are beginning to pile up and some ideas tend to get "lost in the crowd".  So today I organized my previous posts that pertain to beginning piano teaching ideas.  They are listed in the approximate order that I introduce the concepts in lessons.

High/Low Sounds
  Mason Jar Melodies
  Teaching Ear Training Through Song

Right/Left
  Piano Pokey
Piano Technique/Position Concepts
  Song: "At the Piano sit straight and tall.. "
  Caterpillar Crawl  (Firm Fingers, Flexible Wrist, Float-offs)
  Finger Trampoline (Firm Fingers)
  Nile the Crocodile (Level Wrist, Thumb Slide, Rounded Hand)
 1st Piano Adventures Wrist Forearm Fingertips, Cat-Backs, Hangin' on a Fence Post
  Rainbow Wrist Ribbons
Finger Numbers
  Where is One?
  Cookie Dough
Steady Beat
  Steady Beat Elephants, Woodpeckers, etc.
  Trepak Baseball



Black Key Groups
  Seeing and Hearing Piano Patterns from the Start
  Edible Pianos
Piano Keys
  Hey Diddle Diddle the D's in the Middle
High/Low on Staff
  Giant Staff Caught a Fish Alive
  Treble Bass Clef Musical Spots Composing for Beginners
  Piano Storytime Compositions
  Black Key Compositions Line/Space Notes
  Wagon Wheels on the Staff
Music Alphabet
   Music Alphabet Activities
  Music Alphabet Song Movements
Rhythms- Quarter Half,  Dotted Half, Whole Kinesthetic
  Rhythm Ball Roll 
  Rhythm Hop Hunt
Rhythms- Quarter Half,  Dotted Half, Whole Auditory
  Rhythm Match and Build Game 
  Teaching Rhythm Through Song
Rhythms- Quarter Half,  Dotted Half, Whole Visual
  Snackmat Rhythms
  Teaching with Snacks
  Teacher May I Build a Measure
  Note Hunt
  Lego Rhythm Construction
  Phil Tulga Rhythm Games 
  Bed Bug Rhythm Hotel (Measures)

Intro to the Staff
  Yarn Staff Games
  M&M Staff Step Game 
Staff Notes- Bass F - Treble G 
  Don't Eat the Poison Pumpkin Staff Game
Dynamics
  Piano Forte Freeze
Tempo - Adagio, Allegro, Andante
  Adagio Teaching Tip
  Teaching Theory and Tempo Through Song
Steps and Skips
   Fast Hands-Good Ears
  Learning Skips with Skip Frog 
  Edible Piano Skips
Sightreading
  Consecutive Super Sight Readers
Music History 
  Composer Fruit Basket
Chords
 Food for Major Triads
Multi Concept
  Preparing a Child for Piano 
  The Value of Singing at Piano Lessons- Beginning Concepts
  Piano Preschool Lapbooks
  Piano Snackmats 
  Using Songs to Teach 
  Piano Lab Activities - Prep Level
  Let's Play Music 
  Piano Theory Posters
  Piano Cranium
Beyond Beginning
   Sharps Minds and Flats Stomachs
  Note Stem Direction: Poppin ps & Down Low ds
  Teaching Pedaling Creatively 
  Scale Builders 
  Teaching Chord Progressions Through Song
  Teaching Keyboard Skills Through Song
  Minor Scale Pattern Memory Aid

2 comments:

  1. This is great. I was also looking for something from the ground up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. To get a really full sound in your right hand, try putting in not only the notes of the chord under the melody, but also try to incorporate a color tone of some kind, such as a 6th, 7th, major 7th, or 9th. You can overdo it, of course, but this short video demonstrates how it is done.
    Upright pianos

    ReplyDelete