2011 Christmas Cover Art Contest
This year, I am asking the residents of one of our local retirement villages to be the judges in our Christmas Cover Art Contest. I made this display for them and asked them to choose their favorite from both the elementary and the older student selections. I’m always amazed at my students creativity and drawing abilities. Drawing is a skill that I never got as a child and still wish I could develop.
Our theme for our recital this year is “My Favorite Things.” I asked each student to draw something inside the given ornament that represented one of their favorite things about Christmas. The winner will be the feature picture on the cover of our program. Here is a picture of our display and a few of the entries:
Holiday Sight Reading Challenge
On the goal setting form I had students fill out in August, many of my students expressed that they wanted to be better sight readers. In the past few months, my students have participated in a Sight Reading Challenge in which every day they practiced I said I would give a certain amount of money to a local charity. I am going to write more about this at another time of year. But, my students were so excited about that challenge that I wanted to do another one from now until Christmas.
Well, I suppose I have to show you the chart on which we kept track of their progress, because it was this chart and their creative decorating of each of their quarters, that gave me an idea for this next Sight Reading Challenge. Look closely at the picture and you will notice their creativity unfold from the left to the right. About half way through the challenge, some of my students even started decorating their quarters like flags, then pumpkins, then all kinds of things!
So, I began thinking that it would be fun for my students to have ornaments that they could decorate. In addition, I always need a little help decorating the studio for Christmas, so I thought that it would be even more fun for them to try to fill one of my walls with bigger ornament that they decorated.
Well, I was right! They are very excited, so I thought I’d share with you how the challenge is working and what they are getting as a result:
- Each student fills in 1 little ornament on the ornament chart for every day that they sight read (see page 2 of the download).
- For every 5 days, they get to decorate a bigger ornament which I will then place on the wall.
- If their wall ornaments reach from one corner of the wall to the other by December 12th, they will get 15 extra minutes of games at their Christmas party on December 19th! (I have carefully measured the wall and each ornament to see how far they should get if each student gets one big ornament a week…the 5 days they are supposed to practice.) The chart of the smaller ornaments on the wall also helps students feel compelled to sight read as they know their peers will notice if they are not keeping up!
You can download the Christmas Ornaments and use them in your own studio (feel free to use them for other challenges besides sight reading). Let me know how you reward your students for sight reading!
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Candy Corn Polyphony
This week, we had our fall group lessons and I had a fun time tweaking our games to go with a fall theme. I had a particularly good time figuring out what to do with my older kids who were studying monophonic, polyphonic, and homophonic music. We also had to do a segment of ear training on 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and multi-metric meters. A fall theme for these subjects? Yes indeed!
Here’s what we did:
Monophonic, Polyphonic, and Homophonic
With my Level 9 students, I wanted to think of a way to teach these concepts while connecting it to fall. So, I gave each student 3 candy corn. If the sample that I played was
- Monophonic: they would place the candy corn horizontally showing that there was only 1 melody
- Homophonic: they would place one candy corn horizontally and then 2 candy corn vertically underneath the horizontal one to indicate a supporting harmony
- Polophonic: they would place all (or as many voices as they heard) their candy corn horizontally to show different melodies
July Challenge: Lead Sheets Week 4
This post is for all my piano students. Here are this week’s lead sheets for the July Challenge:
Michael:
Week 4 – Lead Sheets Elementary
Chloe, Bethany, Jana:
Week 4 – Lead Sheets Intermediate
Sarah and Nicole:
Go to this website and look at all of the free, downloadable lead sheets for praise songs. Download one that you know or would like to learn and practice this using the skills you learned at Music Menagerie Camp.
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July Challenge: Lead Sheets Week 3
This post is for all my piano students. Here are this week’s lead sheets for the July Challenge:
Michael:
Week 3 – Lead Sheets Elementary
Chloe, Bethany, Jana:
Week 3 – Lead Sheets Intermediate
Sarah and Nicole:
Go to this website and look at all of the free, downloadable lead sheets for praise songs. Download one that you know or would like to learn and practice this using the skills you learned at Music Menagerie Camp.
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July Challenge: Lead Sheets Week 2
This post is for all my piano students. Here are this week’s lead sheets for the July Challenge:
Michael:
Week 2 – Lead Sheets Elementary
Chloe, Bethany, Jana:
Week 2 – Lead Sheets Intermediate
Sarah and Nicole:
Go to this website and look at all of the free, downloadable lead sheets for praise songs. Download one that you know or would like to learn and practice this using the skills you learned at Music Menagerie Camp.
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