Lesson #9

Thanks wonderful grownups for attending class with us this week! They did a lot of thinking this week, and they were awesome!

Just a couple of reminders for our upcoming schedule:

We will not have class on April 4th for Spring Break. 
Our next parent/tuition week will be April 11th.
April 25th will be our Station Day, to which parents will also come to celebrate with us.
Our recital will be held on May 9th at 6pm.

Celebrate Connection
A few ideas to make the alphabet pieces game more playful!

Super Skippers:
Your child draws out an alphabet letter and places it on the keyboard as a 'starter'. Next, she chooses another piece and checks to see if it can make a skip up or a skip down from the starter. If not, discard it and player 2 gets a turn to play (player 2 should start her skipping chain on a different octave from player 1). Keep taking turns until someone makes a chain, by adding skips at the top or bottom, that is 7 letters long and wins!

Parking Lot Cars:
Draw a letter from the lot and park your car on the white key "parking space" that matches. Works great with cars like these from the learning shop. Keep going until you run out of cars (or whatever counters you have).

Cowboys and Indians:
Start one tiny plastic character (ANY tiny plastic figures you have will do: Pokemon, animals, cowboys, princesses, etc.) at one end of the keyboard on a white key, and another at the other end. Draw a tile out and move the low guy up to that key. Draw another tile and move the high guy down to that key. Keep going until they meet (and battle, or shake hands, or whatever you pretend!)

Bug Scale

We can now play UP the C Major Scale with our RH! Place the RH in C position and play with fingers 1-2-3 (CDE) then POP UNDER with the thumb to make a new bubble and continue playing with fingers 1-2-3-4-5 (FGABC). Choose your favorite BUG to practice this new skill. One way to remind where to pop is to insert POP with the bug like this: Butterfly, Butterfly, Butterfly, POPPERfly, Butterfly, etc. As always, we try to make our technique drills so fun that the kids don't even notice they are getting practice!

A Warm Welcome to Middle B and Middle D

The 5 anchor notes used in 2nd year include the members of the “C” family: Treble C, Middle C, and Bass C and the Middle Friends including Middle B who is B-elow Middle C and Middle D who is Down under the first line on the staff.

How to Skip

We will master all of our middle anchor notes with this song: Middle B, Middle C, Middle D. Use the same 3 fingers for the entire song: 1-3-5. Simply move your thumb to the appropriate starting note. Sing "C-skip-skip-skip, D-skip-skip" etc. emphasizing each anchor note. This is where the practice of seeing and playing those middle anchor notes connect!

I am Robin Hood

If your child can play each hand of "I am Robin Hood" comfortably, they are ready to put both hands together! Isolate 1 or 2 measures at a time to have a successful experience, then continue to add 1-2 measures until they can play the entire song with confidence! While practicing with your child, you can guide their eyes by pointing note by note with V fingers. Hooray for Hands Together!

How instinctive is your child getting with their keyboard geography playing the Alphabet Pieces Game? Time your child for 1 minute and see how many pieces they can put on the piano. Your student will treasure this craft and game idea as they continue to solidify all of the notes on the keyboard!