Awesome Website

I was looking around for some flash cards to print to use with my students and I found this website http://www.susanparadis.com/. Susan has tons of ready to print games and activities to do with students. It's a great resource for teachers. Just thought I would share.

Introducing...

Introducing my sister-in-law, Cathy, she is going to be posting some songs on this blog too. Which I'm very excited about because she is a musical genius!

Teaching Intervals

Something I do with my beginner students is give them a little exercise to do each week that is pattern based (so it doesn't require sight reading) and teaches both technique and theory. One of my favorite ones is teaching intervals using the left hand since so many songs can be played with just a few intervals in the left hand (a lot of songs from the Faber lesson book are based on this). I have them play a "C", then a 2nd (C & D), then a 3rd (C & E), then a fourth (C & F), then a 5th (C&G) and then back down again (5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, "C"). I simply have them practice that little pattern 3 to 5 times each day with each hand separately, and eventually, hands together.

Within the same lesson I try and present a song that has an interval in it and we discuss which interval it is to reinforce the idea. "Do As I'm Doing" is a pretty popular one. Enjoy!

Sharing Time

"Me? Teach piano? Well, yeah sure...I guess I could do that."

That was basically my thoughts when a sister in my branch asked me if I would start teaching her kids piano. Soon after that I had my first five piano students without even advertising. The week of my first lesson I had a little panic attack that went something like this, "What am I doing?! I don't even know what to teach them first! Do I teach them how to read music in the first lesson? What piano books am I going to have them get? Etc." Luckily, I have a sister-in-law that has taught piano for quite sometime and she basically walked me through how to teach the first lesson. Whew. After the first lesson, I started developing my own teaching style and now it feels like I've been teaching piano for years.

Sometimes it's hard to get my students to want to practice the piano everyday. I try different teaching techniques all the time, but I've found the most helpful things is letting my students pick the songs they want to play...songs that aren't even in their piano books. All of them love learning Primary songs and Hymns because they are already so familiar with them. The only problem is they are WAY too difficult for them to learn so early on. So what do I do? I create my own simplified versions. I thought this would be a good place to share them after I've written them to hopefully help other piano teachers and students.

The first simplified song I'll share is "Book of Mormon Stories"...what kid doesn't love that song? Enjoy!