Blog

A TIME-SWITCHED CHRISTMAS

10/27/2025

A Time-Switched Christmas began with one carol and one idea - what if we changed the time signature of a Christmas carol? That small experiment turned into something fresh and fun.

From there, the idea grew into a whole collection of reimagined carols. Each arrangement was written with our students in mind - using skills they have learned in a way that makes the pieces sound much more advanced than they actually are and giving them something fresh to play at the Christmas recitals this year. It has been so much fun, and our kiddos are loving the music.

If you're looking for Christmas music that engages your students and keeps them smiling at the piano, "A Time-Switched Christmas" is the perfect addition to your studio library. Click here to listen to the arrangements.

FROGGY PRACTICE LOG

8/31/2025

Sticking to a regular practice routine is one of the biggest keys to becoming a good musician. I'm hoping our froggy-themed piano practice chart is going to be a big practice motivator for our students. Each page has a motivational slogan to keep the students focused. Also, it's a great way for parents to see how their child is performing in the lessons.

We teach a 33-week year with an added 6-week summer, but there is also a chart for up to 40-week year with an added 10-week summer. Click on the charts to download a copy for each of your students. I think they will have fun with them. 😊

Also, let us know if you have some cool motivational phrases we can add to next year's charts!

PIANO PLAYLIST - MEMORIZED REPERTOIRE

8/26/2025

This year, one of my key focuses is to help students memorize music - to prepare them for recitals, talent shows, and unexpected performance opportunities. The Piano Playlist activity is designed to create a repertoire of memorized pieces.

Even the primer students are participating in this initiative. As they progress through their method books, students will select music they enjoy playing to add to their "Piano Playlist" and work on memorizing them. They can also include exam pieces or songs they've heard on the radio, YouTube, or Spotify (and I will do my best to find a version at their skill level).

Initially, I printed a sheet for them to place inside their method books, but then I decided to create cell phone-shaped stickers for the students to stick to their method books so those memory pieces will stay at the forefront of their minds!

The large stickers for the older students, have space for eight memory pieces, while the smaller stickers have space for five memory pieces.

Download the free Piano Playlist sheets for your students.

Both large and medium-sized playlist stickers are available in our Etsy store.

MUSIC MERITS

8/25/2025

This year, we are using a Music Merits Practice Incentive Program for our non-beginners. Students will earn music merits for various activities:

Taking exams
Participating in recitals
Memorizing pieces
Learning new music within two weeks
Practicing regularly
Scoring well on our monthly theory quizzes
Demonstrating extra effort (such as learning a song independently, overcoming musical challenges, or maintaining a positive attitude during tough lessons)

Click here to download a copy of our Music Merits chart and use it as you wish. If you want the editable word document so you can add your own criteria for earning merits, shoot us a message and we'll send it to you for free!

We're using different colored stickers for the different merit categories - purple for exams, pink for recitals etc., so the students will end up with a colorful chart by the end of the piano year. 😁

We’ve designed some adorable inexpensive merit stickers that are available in our Etsy store, but you can use any small stickers to track progress on the charts.

Right now, we're working on the reward system for the program. Students will start to receive rewards when they reach 50 Music Merits, and for every 10 merits after that. We're actually going to let the students vote on the type of rewards they'd like to receive, and we'll have trophies for students who reach 100 merits.

SUMMER PIANO PRACTICE

6/19/2024

We are on break for 3 weeks after a very successful piano year. Yay! Summer class begin mid-July, but about half of our students take a break from piano classes over the summer.

For the younger students, telling them to "play the piano throughout the summer" has better results if they have some way of logging their practice.

This is a practice log chart for our primer/level 1 students. Feel free to download it and use it with your students too!

Woofs VS Meows

1/20/2024

Our Little Mozarts group students recently completed Book 1. Before moving on to book 2, we have spent some time reviewing the material from Book 1. To make it fun, we came up with the Woofs Vs Meows game.

The students are split into 2 teams - the Woofs and the Meows - and each team member earns points for their team by completing challenges. We use the DECIDE NOW app, and students spin the wheel to see what their challenge is. For Book 1, the challenges are:

to play a specific song from the book
to find given keys on the piano (e.g. "Play all the "A" keys on the piano)
to name the symbols on a number of the orange Little Mozart flashcards

Woofs Meows takes up the whole 40-minute lesson, but it has everyone paying careful attention, and it's a fantastic way to review music symbols and pieces that haven't been played for a while.

PRACTICE LOG

1/15/2024

Last week I gave out these practice logs to the students.
I've tried them in the past without much success.

This time, I have asked the parents to initial the practice days rather than have the students check the days off themselves. It's been a neat way to keep parents involved with practice. Also, the fact that five or more practice days earns 3 Chick-Fil-A Piano Points has been a big motivator! Several students had 6 or 7 days signed off and I could actually hear in their playing that they had practiced all week. Yay!

Click on the image to download the practice log if you'd like to use it in your own studio.

Chick-Fil-A challenge

1/3/2024

This piano year, we have been running a Chick-Fil-A practice incentive. It is our most motivating incentive so far!

Students earn "Chick-Fil-A" practice points for playing at recitals, starting a new book, performing their memory pieces, showing up to the lesson with all their books etc. The first 4 students to reach 100 points each win a $10 Chick-Fil-A gift card. Before Christmas, we had 4 winners, and they were all excited to get their gift cards in the mail.

This week we started a new Chick-Fil-A Practice Challenge. This time, students get to choose from ColdStone Creamery, Chipotle or Chick-Fil-A gift cards (but we're still calling in the Chick-Fil-A challenge because the students get super excited about the prospect of getting Chick-Fil-A).

I even made some cut little "chick" stickers to log their progress on the charts this time. I'll make some ice-cream stickers this weekend if I have time. That will keep the ice-cream lovers motivated!

Download the chart and edit it to fit your studio. Choose your own criteria for points. We take new students year-round, so we only wanted the challenge to last 3 or 4 months so that new students can take part without being behind those that were in lessons at the start of the year. With our criteria, we expect to have our 4 winners by Easter and then we'll start again in April.

You can also download the "Congratulations" cards to attach to the gift cards.

You can use any stickers to log progress. Last time we used star stickers from the store. If you want to use our new "chick" stickers, you can get them from our Etsy Store.

Note Ninjas Escape Room

2/19/2023

Yesterday we had our note learning event! We made it a kind of Escape Room - so the students had to work together to find the code to unlock the box of goodies.

Most of our students are online, so it was great for them to actually be in-person with the students from their online groups.

Ten students attended and 3 of our teen students came to help out and man our 3 Note Drill stations:

iPad Note Drills (using the Flash Note Derby and Piano Notes Fun apps)
Worksheet Note Drills (writing note names beneath the notes)
Note Puzzle Note Drills (a puzzle to match the staff note to its alphabet name)

There were so many other activities that we could have included, but we had just one hour, and we didn’t want to add too many activities and run out of time. The main thing was for the activities to be very different from each other to keep the students focused and interested.

The students were arranged into 3 teams:

Rockin’ Reds
Sunny Superstars
Green Machine

The teams had 15 minutes at each station (which definitely wasn’t enough - next time we will make the event longer).

At each station, all students in the team had a given number of note-learning challenges to complete in order for the team to earn a musical clue. (The clues weren't actually related to the note-learning activities, but they were based on music theory).

They then had to work together to decipher the clue and write the answers on their “Clue Calculator” sheet.

On completion of their Clue Calculator sheets each of the teams ended with a single digit number. Those 3 digits were the combination to the lock on the box of goodies that they took home with them.

The kiddos were super excited putting their digits into the lock, and delighted when the lock finally opened, and they could grab the goodie bags from the box.

Our Ninja Prize Box

It was such a fun event! We got such good feedback from the parents, and it was encouraging seeing the students' scores improve on each repetition of the activities. We will definitely be doing another "Escape Room" again.

MUSIC SYMBOL CHARTS

1/29/2023

I gave some of our Little Mozarts students a quiz on music symbols this past weekend. They didn't all do as well as I had expected, so I put together these short music symbol charts for them. We will try the quiz again in a couple of weeks.

Click the image to download them to use with your students if you think they will be useful for your studio.

Julia & Diana

Two sisters on two different continents, working together, creating resources that keep our students motivated and loving piano!

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Photos from wuestenigel (CC BY 2.0), Phil Roeder, gitsul., torbakhopper, University of the Fraser Valley, 401(K) 2013, wuestenigel