I realized as I was working with many of my students on chords and chord inversions that I didn't have a really good, fun way to review them. I have loads of games and activities devoted to note identification, rhythm, terminology, etc., but nothing that I felt worked well to review chords, so...I put on the 'ole thinking cap and came up with... CURVY CHORDS! This is actually a very simple game, but hopefully makes a big impact on my students! Using a green foam board, I cut out 1"x 2" rectangles in 3 different colors. Altering them, I adhered them in a curvy motion around the boards, hence the really "original" name! Then I added die cut letters to make up the title of the game and the words, "start" and "finish". As a bit of excitement during the game, I randomly added an eighth note to a few of the rectangles. I cut these out with a fun punch that one of my students gave to me. After that was all done, I simply applied contact to the board! Easy, peasy!! Then, I put together three sets of cards. Again, three different colors to match the colors of the rectangles I put on the board. Here's how the game works...students move around the board with the roll of a die. The color their game piece lands on determines the color of the card they pick. The cards ask them to do one of three things...Play It! They are asked to play a specific chord on the piano. Name It! They are given three letters of the musical alphabet and asked to put them together in root position in order to name the chord. And Invert It! They need to play or name a chord in first or second inversion. If they can correctly answer/play what is asked of them on the card, they can leave their game piece on the new rectangle. If they can't, they must return their game piece to their previous position. Obviously, the first to reach the finish wins! To add a bit of excitement to the game, each color also includes three specialty cards that say, "Your a Chord Master! Take an extra turn!", "You've curved off track! Lose a turn!", or "Invert your game piece! Switch places with another player.". As far as the little eighth notes on the rectangles, I use those as bonus spots. If a player lands on a rectangle with an eighth note and can correctly answer the card, they get a bonus and can move ahead 3 extra rectangles! In addition to the game board you will need to make, and cards you can download here, you will need game tokens (like those cute smiley face erasers?), and a die. And of course, you will need students who are eager to work on their chords! I hope you enjoy using the game in your own studio! 

A catchy play on the word "controllers". Possible uses: A gaming platform. A music studio. An entertainment studio.

Last week I shared a major pentascales chart and two major pentascale worksheets. As a followup, I created a minor pentascales chart as well. Why all these pentascale posts? One of my 2014 Studio Resolutions is

This week I start the first of three camps I will be doing this summer. This week it's MUSIC OLYMPICS! This is the third year I have run t...

3 Exercises For Orff Body Percussion 1. An easy and fun rhythmic exercise for Orff Body Percussion. 2. Follow up to the first Keep the Beat. Slightly more difficult rhythmic exercise for Orff body percussion with dotted quarter note, eighth note rhythms. 3. Follow up to Keep The Beat 1 and 2. Emphasis is on precision with rests needing care. Each part should follow on to the next in a seamless flow. This exercise can be repeated at faster and faster tempos. TERMS OF USE: © Yvonne Johnson Music. All Rights Reserved Free downloads are intended for your own personal, non-commercial use or for use with students in your private studio or classroom. You may not sell, resell, distribute as your own, share or upload to the internet any sheet music either purchased or available as a free download. The copyright of all music, paid or free is owned by Yvonne Johnson Music

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Thanks to a tip from Jeana's blog I picked up this Jenga style game for $5 at the local Family Dollar over the holidays and transformed it into Music Jenga. My students (and family) have enjoyed playing this game to start out their lessons this week. I chose different colors to represent the different levels of terms/rhythms, but since it was hard to tell the blue and purple apart I turned all of the purple dots on the ends into notes. I put terms or symbols on 2 of the sides and plan to write 2 measure rhythms on the other 2 sides to create a more versatile game that I can adapt depending on what the student needs to work on. I tweek the rules a bit depending on the student. For students who have been taking lessons for a few years I require them to pick another block if they can't define the terms.

Whether it’s electronic drones or perfect pop ballads, our music editors have brought together 60 profoundly beautiful songs to calm the Covid-19 stress. Suggest your own in the comments

As a child, I vividly remember sitting on my living room floor while watching hours and hours of competitions on the television.

Here's how to play differen chord inversions.

Music teachers may not be the greatest business people, but they can pretend to be with good business forms. In this post I share some of the business forms I use in my piano studio as examples. T…

I've been having so much fun with my new laminator! It is probably one of the most versatile investments I have ever made for my studio. Not only can I use it to protect flashcards and game pieces, but I've recently started laminating my worksheets to eliminate paper waste. Her are a few that I've created in the past week (and laminated of course! :) ). I can't wait to start using them with my students this week. I have a fair number of students who are in Piano Adventures Level or have recently started Level 2A. I created these worksheets to help drill the treble clef space notes. Using FACE is an excellent way to reinforce spatial recognition as students use both 3rds and 5ths to identify these notes. My goal is to drill these notes and then continue by translation that knowledge onto the keyboard, which is part of the purpose of the final worksheet. Note recognition doesn't mean anything unless they can translate it onto the keys, in my opinion at least! As always, please feel free to provide feedback and use any of these worksheets for your own personal studios (click on the printables tab and scroll down to find these worksheets).

Hello, this is Lindsay Jervis, from Pursuit of Joyfulness and Lindsay's Kodaly Inspired Classroom (on facebook). “The most important thing is to actualize the instinctive love of the child for singing and playing, to realize the changing of his moods through the songs, his feelings, his experiences. . . in other words, to bring about the miracle of music.” (Adám, in The Kodály Concept, 1966, p. 2) But HOW do we keep them singing as they get older? I really do believe that the love of music and singing must be something that is instilled from a very young age (most likely before they even enter our classrooms) because of the exposure to music and their musical experience in the home, but that being said, I do believe what we do once them come to elementary school can have a profound impact on what they think of music and music class and whether they WANT to continue in music as they go on through schooling and life. With the little ones, I have always felt this comes easy. Song, stories, and play are so much a part of what they love to do. With the old grades (I'm thinking 3rd-5th), you have to carefully select music, games, and activities that have just the right amount of challenge to peak their interest, keep them engaged, and meet their skill level without becoming too difficult that they give up and become frustrated. In my psychology of Music Ed class last semester we talked about the inverted U - as the challenge goes up, the performance and enjoyment of the students goes up until they reach their skill peak. After that peak, students feel stress, anxiety and give up on the task or "think it's stupid". This is where it is really important to know where your kids are at and select appropriate songs for them. The songs cannot be too babyish (even if the students really are beginners and need to practice things like steady beat and basic rhythm or tonal patterns). I still really consider my older students to be older beginners. I started at my school three years ago and my kids had NO method of reading rhythms or pitches when I got there, so that coupled with my maternity leave my 2nd year there, and they are still not quite up to speed, but that is ok. It is better to go at the pace of the students and do developmentally appropriate literature than push ahead for the sake of staying "on grade level". Here are some songs and games that I have done with my students. In some of these cases, we have used them to isolate rhythm or melodic concepts, but some we have used purely for the joy they bring students while participating. If you find a song that students can't wait to sing/play again- it's a GEM! Hang onto it! You know this one is a gem when I have 5th graders still request it every time they earn a free day. The game is very simple. Students are seated in a circle with their hands behind their back. One student is "it". I call it the "detective" with the older kids and for some reason that is cooler than "it". The first time we play I go around the outside of the circle with a key hidden in my hand. I hide the key in someone's hands. Once I have made it around the circle once, I stop and the detective gets three guesses to try to figure out where the key is. This song is great for older beginners because of the easy rhythms, it is also great for teaching re. With my older beginners I started melody with mi re do instead of sol-mi. Pre-made visuals for this song available here. This song is great for teaching sixteenth notes and the game is a lot of fun. Set up students in a double circle. Inside circle will move clockwise, outside circle will move counterclockwise during the song. Select two chicken farmers. They stand facing away from the circle on opposite sides of the circle. All students in the circles join hands and teacher selects one "window" in each circle. On the last word of the song (I only use verse 1 when playing the game), the selected partners hold their arms up to create a window. The two farmers must race, only going through the "open windows" to get to the middle. I usually borrow a rubber chicken from my PE teacher to throw in the middle. The kids think it is hilarious. This play party is played in longways sets with two lines facing each other (typically one line of boys and one line of girls). Verse 1, the first girl skips around both lines and back to her place. Verse 2, "pretty little Susie skips around set and boys line follows until all are back in their places. Verse 3, cast off, or "peel the banana", head couple forms an arch at the bottom of the set and everyone goes under the arch and the song starts over with a new head couple. Use when preparing and practicing tiri-tiri. If you would like visuals and assessment tools like the one below for this song, you can find some here. I use this song when preparing and practicing tiri-ti. I have one person travel around the circle with two envelopes. Ones says "Ida Red" the other says "Ida Blue". Inside each envelope is an action like crawl, skip, gallop, twirl, crabwalk, hop on one foot, etc. On the last word of the song, the person with the envelopes stops between the two closest people and hands an envelope to each. They take out one card then when I say go, they race around the circle performing that action. If I feel one has an unfair advantage (like crab walk vs. run), I can make one go around twice. The winner gets to be "it" and the game resumes. This one is great for low la! The following two songs were a lot of fun for my fifth grades to create an arrangement of for our Fall Program last year. We used these plus "Who Has Seen the Wind" and added ostinato patterns and added Orff instruments. Each class was responsible for arranging how they wanted to perform the song. They might have chosen to singing sing just the ostinato, then add the melody, then sing and play on barred instruments, and then sing a capella as they traded spots with the next class who was moving onto the barred instruments. It was different for each class and it allowed for them to take something that we were working on in class, take ownership and polish it so that it was something we could present to parents. I used Mamalama strictly for the joy of it last year. It was a great "ice breaker" game for back to school time. My kids loved the challenge of learning the words. I had one girl nail it the first week, which was really cool. You could use this in prepping for fa but it is probably not one that I would use to present fa. This is another one that was played for the joy of it. My kids aren't to low ti yet and the syncopated rhythms are a bit above my kids, but they still need to sing and play this hand clapping game because it is fun. Here's a video of the hand clapping game:

Transform piano lessons into engaging adventures with these fun and educational piano games! Explore physical and digital options!

I'm planning a special group lesson over Easter Break week for my beginning students and in preparation I'm coming up with a few easy games that will help them review basic concepts. This simple game helps students recognize and distinguish between 3/4 and 4/4/ time. There are 4 pages of 'rhythm eggs', plus a blank page if you want to make up some more of your own. Simply print and cut out the eggs. Then get 2 baskets and designate 1 basket for the 3/4 eggs and 1 for the 4/4 eggs. The student must look at the card and decide which basket to place the egg into. You can do this activity individually in lessons, or as a fun group activity with 2 teams competing to see which team can get all their eggs sorted first. You can view and print the game by going to the printables tab under "Games". Hope you enjoy this game with your students!

Update: July 13, due to overwhelming interest (and overwhelming my email box) the full collection will only be available until Monday, July ...

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Teaching Canon Singing. Organized Chaos. Strategies for introducing canons in elementary choir or general music lessons.