This year Valentines Day falls on a Friday (and the last day of half term at local schools)- so all my pupils get to have fun with Valentines-themed activities! I’m really excited to see their reactions and hope they have a special time this week 🙂 The home studio is bedecked in pink and loveliness […]
Here in Manchester, Chinese New Year is a big celebration, with a big, colourful Dragon Parade through town and lots of noise! Perfect for inspiring a splash of colour and imagination into our piano lessons during the misty, grey month of January. So here are some ways we explored Chinese sounds in our piano lessons […]
The summer holidays are nearly here! For pupils that have piano lessons in school, that can mean a very long time before they have their next piano lesson in September. Here is a practice challenge I made for my beginners that reviews their learning in a fun and creative way. It reminds them of some […]
Here is a bright and simple way I help beginner musicians embed pulse and beat in their first year of learning. My piano pupils do lots of aural activities during lessons. They learn through a ‘sound before symbol’ approach. One way my pupils internalise beat and pulse is with a quick challenge where we swap […]
This is a hugely versatile game that children especially love in piano lessons, but I use it with students of all ages! 10 of my beginners at Didsbury Piano have started learning crotchet, quaver, minim and semibreve rhythms and I like to give them plenty of reinforcement in a fresh and fun way. Today we […]
Here’s how I use a fun game with a beginner teaching piece that really reaps its rewards through repetition. The piece: Zebra on a Playground This is a beginner improv/technique piece from Piano Safari repertoire book level 1. The goal: strengthen the nail joint on every finger and cement keyboard geography. How: Play the piece […]
I am a big fan of using lots of fun props and manipulatives in lessons, and over the last few years I have ended up with boxes full of them. I just can’t resist their lure! So I extra-love it when I can put them to work double-duty and find multi-tasking uses for these little […]