Piano Beanbags

February 12, 2015 Jennifer Boster
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Blog, Featured Posts, Uncategorized
Today I just wanted to share something fun I made for my daughter! I have been teaching my 3-year-old daughter piano lately, and she really loves it. Her almost-2-year-old brother likes to tag along as well; it’s a fun part of our day!
Sometimes when I get awakened early in the morning by my *darling* children, the wheels in my mind start turning and I just can’t shut it off and go back to sleep – this was one of those early morning ideas that came to me last week, and it turned out so fun!
Since my daughter is pretty little, right now we are doing a combination of piano basics (keyboard topography, black key patterns, high/low, etc.), pre-staff notation/rote songs, music & movement, games on my giant floor keyboard, etc. I wanted a fun way to get her to start recognizing the different white keys without necessarily quizzing her on the letter names (she is still learning her alphabet anyway, and doesn’t know them all yet). So I made these fun beanbags for her! Each beanbag has either 2 black keys or 3 black keys with their coordinating white keys; each also has a colorful circle on one of the white keys.
When I sewed these my daughter was thrilled! We have put them to good use already. Here are a few of the ways we have used them in her lessons:
*matching them up with the black key groups on the giant floor keyboard (she puts them on either a 2-black-key group or a 3-black-key group)
*matching them up on the giant floor keyboard with the specific white key shown with the colorful circle – she got the hang of this so quick and did a great job! A good first step to learning the letter names on the keyboard.
*putting them all together in a row in the correct pattern (2 black keys, 3 black keys, 2 black keys, 3 black keys) to make a beanbag keyboard
*pretending to play some of her little songs on the beanbags once they are put together in a row!
The backs of the beanbags are just fun colorful patterns.
I’m having lots of fun teaching my daughter and focusing on coming up with ideas for one-on-one lessons for preschoolers. They are such a fun age group, and are so excited about music and learning things that it is a perfect age to start if you do it right (LOTS and lots of off-the-bench learning, music and movement, listening games, and just teaching with excitement and joy). 
What things have you found that work with teaching little ones? Or with teaching your own children?

Upside-Down Compositions

April 26, 2012 Jennifer Boster
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Sometimes my best (and most successful) teaching ideas are the spur-of-the-moment ones that I just sort of think up at the last second. Today I had a student arrive without her books (and she had not practiced much this week), so I grabbed my staff flannel board and some black felt notes.

I first had her review the notes in a C Major five-finger scale (a great note-reading review as well as a review of her scales!) by building the scale on the flannel board. I then had her build a C Major chord as well (my students surprisingly mix up chords and arpeggios all the time – I tell them to sing “ar – pe – ggio!” while playing the three notes of the arpeggio, and to sing “chord” when playing a chord – it seems to help a bit!).

I then allowed her to make up her own short song with any notes in the bass clef. She LOVED this (I have found that most young children LOVE making up their own music….let’s take that and run with it, shall we??) and came up with this song:

I then had her play it on the piano (an EXCELLENT note-reading exercise – and she did very well considering she is in level 2 of Faber’s My First Piano Adventures…barely into note reading!).  I told her afterwards that we were going to do something super cool with her song. I added an upside-down treble clef at the end of her song…

…and then flipped the whole thing over!

She was excited to see that this had created an entirely new song in the treble clef! We had fun playing it and seeing what it sounded like (naming all the notes as we went…great review!).

I decided to send her home with some blank staff paper and I assigned her to write a short song (using the notes of a predetermined five-finger scale, to keep it simple and easy to play in one hand position), and then to flip it over and play the upside-down version!

Here is one we did in the C Major five-finger position:

You flip it over and you’re in a nice F position – easy for small hands.

Voila – a fun and simple note-reading/five-finger scale/composition exercise! Goodnight all!

 

Giant Floor Staff!

April 20, 2012 Jennifer Boster
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Featured Posts, Uncategorized


Happy Friday everyone! I hope you’re all having a lovely day and have a fun weekend planned. As for me, I am sitting here in my pajamas enjoying the beginning of my weekend and a day off from teaching piano.

Those of you who have purchased my graphic to make a Giant Floor Keyboard will be excited to hear that I now have a Giant Floor Staff graphic available! My vinyl floor staff turned out great and I am so excited to use it in my music classes and camps! I have already gotten some good use out of it in my private lessons. It is so great to have a super fun and different way to help my students learn the notes on the staff, which allows them to get off of the bench and move around.

I debated about putting a clef on there or not…and ended up not. I wanted to be able to use it for bass clef or treble clef notes. I think I may try to make some big clefs that I can put on there when needed, but for now it has worked fine without.

It is nice and big (about 90 inches long 28 inches tall, not including the white border) and is perfect for children to walk, stand, jump, and run on (I know this because my four-year-old son got some great use out of it this morning….also, it is nice and sturdy!!)

Just like my Giant Floor Keyboard, I had it made on www.bannersonthecheap.com. They have excellent prices, high-quality products and super fast delivery time. Totally an awesome deal, and the ease and quality is worth the money, in my opinion!

I created my own custom-designed 3′ x 8′ banner by uploading my staff image. Stretch the image to fill the banner area (leaving a small white margin around the outside, if desired) and select the box to center it horizontally. Click “Save and Continue” and you are all set to order your Giant Floor Staff. Easy peasy.

You can use fun letter name beanbags…

…colorful craft foam notes (hmmm, makes me want to play Twister)…

…or simply allow children to walk right on there and be the notes themselves!

Students of all ages and levels (even preschoolers) will get so much use out of this giant staff!

The graphic is available for purchase here as well as on the “Printables & Downloads” page.

Giant Floor Staff Graphic
$3.00

 

Giveaway Sneak Peek & Free Printable!

April 11, 2012 Jennifer Boster
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Featured Posts, Uncategorized

Today I wanted to give you a little sneak peek into our Spectacular Spring! lesson plan…and give you a little portion of it for free! As part of our class, we have often used these fun Snack Mats to reinforce musical concepts…and to give the kids a chance to have a little snack and get a change of pace from other activities. We put these two pages back to back and slip them into sheet protectors. The children sit around the table with small snacks (fruit snacks, cereal, goldfish crackers, raisins, etc.) and we do ear training and other activities. The children can listen for high or low notes, for example, and place a snack on the high or low end of the piano or the grand staff. Our snack mat has a grand staff on one side, and a piano keyboard on the other. There is also a section for listening for fast/slow, soft/loud and short/long notes.

This is just one of the fun activities included in our Spectacular Spring! lesson plan. If you haven’t entered our giveaway yet, don’t forget to enter! Giveaway ends Monday, April 16.

Also available on the “Printables & Downloads” page!

Teaching Tip Tuesday: Visualize the Music

April 10, 2012 Jennifer Boster
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Teaching Tip #8: Visualize the Music

All of my beginning students do five-finger scales/arpeggios/chords each week. Sometimes it’s fun to give them a new way to visualize these scales! I had a lot of success with my youngest student (4 years old) learning her C Major five-finger scale using these colorful fuzzies as a reminder of which notes to play! I sent the fuzzies home with her in a little baggie and she got to put them on her piano to find the right notes so she could “tip-toe up the keys.”

 

Another great way for young students to visualize scales (and to experience them in a whole new way using their whole body!) is to use a giant floor piano and colorful beanbags. Students can actually “tip-toe up the keys” and even “play” the scale in different ways – short or long (hopping or slowly stepping), soft or loud (saying the letter names soft or loud and stomping or tip-toeing), etc.

What are some ways you help your students to visualize the music?


p.s. don’t forget to enter the giveaway for a free copy of my new Spectacular Spring! lesson plan!

My favorite first lesson, and a sweet flannel board staff tutorial

January 24, 2012 Jennifer Boster
6 Comments
Featured Posts, Uncategorized

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My four-year-old son has recently been very interested in my piano lessons. He will quietly wander into the room while I am teaching and say that he just wants to watch. He has actually had quite a bit of music instruction over the past year and a half, as he has attended all of my preschool piano classes and has been sort of my “guinea pig” while coming up with fun music games. But my husband and I have never pushed him to learn, we want him to want to on his own!

In the past when I have mentioned to him that if he wants to learn I can teach him, he has said, “but I already know how to play the piano!”

So last week I mentioned to him that whenever he wants to learn to play the piano I would be happy to teach him, and to just let me know when he wants to have lessons. He thought for a second, and then said, “how about tomorrow?”

Music to my ears!

We had his first lesson last week and it was a success. We are keeping it very low-key and not requiring a lot, as far as practicing goes – at his age I do not want to force him to practice. I want this to be a fun, positive experience to give him a great introduction to music – and we’ll see where it leads!

We traced his hands and wrote in the finger numbers (which he already knew from our piano class) and played some finger number games. We used drips and rainbows to make a song with short and long notes (thanks to Anne Crosby Gaudet and her excellent blog post and Music Discoveries workbook) and then clapped the rhythm and played it on the piano. We then learned a short song in his Celebrate Piano!book and then he got a turn playing the MiDisaurusgame on my studio computer.

Here is my buddy boy at his first lesson!

Now I’d like to share with you my FAVORITE teaching aid from the past few months – my flannel board staff! I had the idea for this baby after getting a new sewing machine. Ok, so that’s not entirely true – I was wanting to make some kind of music staff for teaching, and had a few ideas, but then my HUSBAND actually had the idea to sew the lines on! What a guy.
This has proven to be such a helpful teaching aid. I have used it in many preschool piano classes, as well as in numerous private lessons. It’s been a wonderful way to get students off the bench and thinking about music theory in a fun and hands-on way.
So you want to make one? Simple.
Take a big piece of cardboard. I cut mine from a big cardboard box. Mine is about 24″ by 32″.
Get a piece of white flannel large enough to cover the cardboard and wrap around to the back (so you’ll want it a bit bigger than your cardboard).
Measure off and mark where you want your lines to be. Mine are 1 1/2 inches apart, with about 4 1/2 inches between the two staves. I used a washable marker to mark a few dots where the lines should be, and then was able to wash it out after sewing the lines.
Load some black thread onto your sewing machine and then sew a wide and short zigzag stitch (hope that makes sense…I’m not up on my sewing terminology!) for each staff line.
Once all of the lines are done, carefully line the fabric up with the cardboard so the lines are straight. Fold it over the cardboard (sort of like wrapping a present) and slap some duct tape on the back to hold it in place.
Voila! You’ve got yourself a flannel board staff.
You can then use felt or flannel to make all sorts of notes and clefs and things to put on your staff to use in teaching. Maybe sometime I’ll share more of the ways I have used mine.
Have fun!

 

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Teaching Tip Tuesday: Visualize the Music

My favorite first lesson, and a sweet flannel board staff tutorial

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