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.

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.  

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!

If you think they would be useful for your studio, you can download them here. There are even some blank cards included so you can write in your own practice ideas. Let us know how your students enjoy them!

I love the idea, though I didn't really want to use Hangman, and then I saw someone suggested building a snowman instead of a hangman. Today I put together a PowerPoint activity that we will be using this month to get everyone ready for their Christmas Piano Postcards.  ​It worked so well in today's lessons that we'll be sharing it with the Piano-Together Club members later this month!

Last week, at the end of a lesson, we had a little time left. I decided to use the Staff Pets Power Point activity to do a little quiz on the lines and spaces on the staff. I randomly selected line/space numbers and the students had to identify pet on that line/in that space.

What I thought would be a quick fun exercise turned out to be a big challenge to one of the students in the group. She has been playing Middle C position staff notes for the past year. We had covered the line and space numbers several times early on, but it seems she hadn't really grasped it. She confused the lines with the spaces and became very frustrated and unhappy - especially as the other students were answering the questions correctly.

This was yet another reminder for me to review, review, review and then review some more. So I added extra slides to the PowerPoint for introducing the lines/spaces. I also created additional quiz slides to keep it interesting, as this is another activity that students will be doing every week until they have completed the primer level.

We'll be sending this out to Piano-Together-Club members in December. If you want one earlier, join the Piano-Together-Club, and we'll send it to you later this week! 

A few years ago, we put together a little booklet that we used to reinforce steps and skips for our young students. It was very popular, and your young students may find it useful. It was kind of long (lots of exercises for the students to practice, practice, practice!), so we've cut it down to remove some of the repetition.
Click on the images below to download and share with your students.