Elephants & Cows

What do elephants and cows have to do with piano lessons?

When I was began piano lessons, we used the sentences “Every Good Boy Deserves Football” and “Good Boys Deserve Fresh Apples.” Not a good idea to have "Good Boys" in both sentences - we often confused the two.

Elephant Face and Biking Cows are PowerPoint/Google Slides games that are used a LOT in our lessons. The Elephant’s Face is high up on his body -  treble clef is for high notes. The Bike and the Cows are down on the ground - bass clef is low notes. That's how our students remember which sentence applies to which clef.

But the sentences are just a spring board. Ultimately we want the students to recognize the notes on sight, and that comes from lots of practice and consistent review, which is why we use these activities so much.

As well as learning E,G,B,D,F as the names of the treble clef line notes, students need to know where the matching keys are on the piano. So many times, a student has correctly named the D or the F, and then proceeded to play the D or F close to Middle C.

So we have them play the “E, G, B, D, F” keys 3 times in a row before they start naming and playing the notes.  The neat thing about PowerPoint versions of Elephant Face and Biking Cows is that the student also hears the note played, so not only do they see the correct “answer” after they have named and played it, they hear it too.