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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! 
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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.
Ten students attended and 3 of our teen students came to help out and man our 3 Note Drill stations:
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.
In September a whole bunch of new kiddos signed up for lesson with us. It has been a delight teaching them. This Christmas we are planning a mini-recital during the last lesson of the year, and we put together cute sticker/candy packs with encouraging greeting cards for each student to collect after the recital.
Students love stickers. Piano students love piano stickers. This year, we're finally returning to in-person lessons for new students, and we have made personalized stickers for them to put on their folders and music books. We'll also be adding stickers to the Piano Packs that we mail to online students.  This summer, we tested different styles of stickers on some of our summer students. They were such a big hit - even some of the older teens (14, 15, 16 year olds) were delighted with them, so we are making them available to others on the Piano Together Etsy Store.
Our stickers come in sets of 8 or 16, and you can personalize each sticker in the set. For example, if you have 16 students, just select the style you want, enter the student names, and we'll set you 16 personalized stickers. I'm sure your student will love them just as much as ours do! All stickers are 25% off through August 31. Yay! This summer, we had a lot of fun with the PianOlympics piano practice incentive. The students worked hard in teams to gain as many practice points as possible, and the winners were super excited to receive their prizes in the mail. We are still online so the prizes were mailed out, but the students were delighted to receive a package addressed to themselves. The only downside of the PianOlympics incentive, was the fact that a few of the members of the winning teams, hadn't actually contributed very much to the team. So this month, we started the Fantastic-30 practice challenge.  Students are being challenged to complete at least 30 pieces of music before the end of the school year. A piece is counted as 'complete' when the student has played it to recital level at 2 separate lessons. We ran this challenge a few years ago when we were in-person, but as we are still online, we are making the most of the visual effects of PowerPoint. At the start of each lesson, we share the Fantastic-30 PowerPoint on the screen so the students can see how they are doing compared to other students at the same level. They are really motivated to keep up with each other right now. 
We're including pictures of the PowerPoint slides in our monthly newsletter, so that parents can see how their child is doing and encourage them in their practice.
We are also encouraging the students to select 2 or 3 pieces they really like, and to memorize them. Our recitals are pre-recorded online, so not much memorizing has been happening for a while, and we want to get back into that. Prizes go to the first 3 students to reach 15 pieces, and then later to the first 3 students to reach 30. We will also have a prize at the end of the year, for the student who learned the most pieces of music. We are expecting big progress this year! Yay! This summer, we are running a super piano practice incentive for our students. After learning about the copyright on the word "Olympics", I settled for the title - "The Piano Games." I doubt the students will mind - they are more focused on the prizes than the title! We are still online and won't be returning to in-person lessons for the rest of 2021, so our "score charts" are all on PowerPoint. (Even when we return to in-person, we will still use PowerPoint for games and charts - it is so easy to amend things and put together a quick game to reinforce concepts! PowerPoint rocks!)
First of all, a big "Thank You" to the fantastic music teachers on Facebook whose suggestions helped me to put this program together. So we will be having team events and solo events. The students are split into 4 teams. We tried to make it even by having the same number of students at the same level in each team. We've also made sure that the students who practice a lot are not all in the same team, and the students who practice a lot less are also in different teams. The team events are:
When a student scores a point, we'll "color" one of the blocks for their team. The visual effect will be a big motivator. We did a similar thing with charts on the wall a few years back when we were in-person, and as soon as the students entered the room, they checked the charts to see how their team was doing :) Solo events are:
So we will begin in July, and I'm pretty sure we'll amend some of the events before then - (we may incorporate some worksheet events or some coloring events), but this is what we've come up with so far. We will still be online through the summer so the PowerPoint charts will be instrumental in keeping the students motivated.
You are welcome to download the PowerPoint and to amend it to fit your studio. Create the events, determine which will be team events and which will be individual events, rename the teams if you like, and add your own students names. Even if you're doing in-person lessons, your students will enjoy seeing the scores each week. Let us know if you need any help tailoring it to your studio!
In the past we have given prizes for those who practice 40 days or more (and sound like it!), but we won't be doing that this year. Instead, we will ask them to send in videos of completed pieces - just to keep them playing instead of doing mad practice the week before their lessons restart.
If you think it will be useful for your studio, click on the images and download the PDF. Print it double-sided, flipping on the short edge. If you would like the editable Publisher Document so you can personalize it for your students/studio, let us know and we will email it to you. On a previous post, we shared how we used "Cat Coins" to keep our students motivated to practice. This month, we are doing it again with a new cat.
At the school year end in June, we took a break from the cat, But this month, the Cat is Back! I will write the names on the "Cat Coins" and put them in the cat myself - in full view of the students. We will have different colored coins this time so the students can have fun selecting a cat coin color (I know we'll need to reserve 5 minutes of lesson time for the selection lol!) Then we will pick a name out every 2 months and the winner will receive their own "Cat Piggy Bank."
I am super excited to tell the students the Cat is Back. I know they will be even more excited about it than I am! |
Julia & DianaTwo sisters on two different continents, working together, creating resources that keep our students motivated and loving piano! Email addresses like [email protected] are rejected by Mailchimp, so please avoid using role-based email addresses.
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