Earlier this year I wrote out easy versions of a few worship songs for a couple of the primer students. Their reactions were amazing! We were so delighted at how much practice they put into the "real songs." Even the parents were getting more involved. 

This prompted me to find simple versions of well-known songs at primer level, as I began to imagine a studio filled with super-motivated students :) There were several books on Amazon, but most of them had the note names written on the notes. After months of note drills and students working hard to learn to read music on the staff, using a book with note names was not something we wanted to do, so I put together my own book (without note names!) of 20 well known songs including:

It has been so well received by both the students and their parents, that we now use it as the “Performance Book” for our primer and early level 1 students. 

Our Music Mania Mats (theory worksheets) were such a big hit this past year, that I included the same style worksheet for nearly every song in the book. Our students are enjoying coloring the worksheets, and answering the questions - and most of all, they are enjoying playing "real songs." I think parents enjoy hearing songs they know too 😊​

You can find Super Easy Piano Pieces on Amazon . A nice inexpensive way to make your primer students happy :)

A few years ago, we had lots of fun at Easter with group pieces. Arranging several pieces for 3 or 4 pianos was a good way of getting a whole lot of students into a 40-minute recital.

We will probably be doing an online recital again this year, but for those of you who are back to in-person, feel free to download and use with your students!

Download these and other group-piano-arrangements FREE from TeachersPayTeachers. We would love, love, love to see videos of your students performing them! Share them with us if you like :)

Our Pre-Primer (and some of our Primer), (and actually some of our Level 1) students consistently check their fingers before playing each key. Rather than focusing on the sheet music, they look down at the piano keys every few notes, resulting in numerous pauses in each line of music.

We put together this Finger Power activity to encourage our young students to keep their eyes on the sheet music as much as possible.  

We also use this activity to strengthen understanding of stepping up/stepping down. Getting the firework display reward keeps the students super focused on playing the 8 notes without looking down at their hands.

We have had a few tears from the youngest student who didn't get through all 8 notes. Sometimes it seems a little harsh for their turn to be over if they look at their fingers at any point, but it has been so effective. After having their turn terminated a couple of times, students are super focused and disciplined enough not to look at their hands. It has been really rewarding watching them all grow stronger in this area of trusting their fingers to find the keys on their own.

The trick is to repeat this activity for several weeks - even when it's easy for the students. It's important to remind them to carry these skills from the activity to their actual music books.

One of our goals at Piano-Together, is to have as many children as possible involved with the piano. Our lessons are inexpensive, we take on students with digital pianos and keyboards, we often compose music specifically for our students, we use LOTS of PowerPoint games and activities, and we make the classes as fun as possible. All these efforts have helped our studio to really grow!

Another thing that has helped us grow, is music videos! Now that all our lessons are online for the foreseeable future, our recitals are also online. We encourage families to share the recital videos with family and friends, and when they do, it brings more students to our studio so we can share the joy of music with even more children. Yay!

Ode to Joy is very popular among our primer students - and new beginners are looking forward to learning it after seeing Vihaan perform it this past Christmas! You can download a copy of this primer version of Ode to Joy for your own studio :)

We created the Talking Wheels activity to give our students a chance to socialize in our online group lessons. We select a subject from the Talking Wheels menu: - All About You * All About School * All About Piano * All About Today * All About Christmas

Then we spin that subject’s wheel to decide what we are going to talk about. I usually go first, and share something funny or exciting which motivates the students to share their answers/thoughts on the topic. This week, we will be spinning the “All About Christmas” wheel so everyone can share about the Christmas break.

This works really well - especially with our elementary school students who love to share about pretty much anything - especially if they haven’t practiced that week 😁. (Sometimes it works too well, and we have to be careful that the activity doesn’t take up too much time of the 40-minute lesson!) We find it’s important to encourage social interactions to build friendships and help the students to feel comfortable with each other.

The Elephant Face Quiz Book is another way we keep our students practicing note recognition. It's not a book for the students to write in - it is a series of random note timed quizzes for the students to play in 60 seconds or less.

Using cute phrases like "Good Bikes Don't Fall Apart" and "Elephants Get Big Dirty Feet", our students are not only recognizing notes on sight, but they are also finding the corresponding keys on the piano keyboard. 

We let them practice the quizzes during the week between lessons. It works ok because they don't know which quiz we will ask them to do at the actual lesson. We've also started using these cool PowerPoint Timers in our online group lessons. 

We start the timer running when the student starts the quiz. It creates a lot of excitement among the others as they watch to see if the student will beat the clock or not.  They're always super excited to color the "30 second circle" in their books when they complete a quiz in 30 seconds or less.

The Quiz Timer will be our January freebie for Piano Together Club members to use with the Elephant Face quizzes, or for anything else!  You can purchase the Elephant Face book from Amazon.  

We were unable to do in-person recitals this year, so for our Christmas Recital, we did a "Piano Postcards" project.  We used the VideoShop app to edit the student's videos into the "postcard" format and just for fun, we took advantage of some of the animated gifs. Here are a few of the performances.

I thought all our primer students fully understood how the music alphabet worked. And then, after months of lessons, one student asked me "When are we going to get to the Z note?" 

​So now, we use this PowerPoint activity to rehearse music alphabet every week 😊.
​And any students who are struggling get to use the flashcards to practice at home with mom and dad!