Fun Fall!

What an amazing start to a fall quarter! I was honestly concerned that it would be a difficult year for piano due to Covid-19, but I’ve been blessed in Evanston, Wyoming to be able to stay open and offer a combination of in-person and online lessons as needed for families who feel more comfortable with that option. And after a summer of massive professional development, I’ve actually gained three out-of-state students who will now have a permanent spot in my online studio. What an exciting time to teach piano! I know that not everyone has been able to have such a positive year, and I hope to do whatever I can to help raise our spirits a little amidst all of this difficulty. I really believe that music and playing music can help us get through the most difficult of times, and I hope that teaching piano to these kids can provide them with a good emotional outlet and a little bit of enjoyment while navigating all of the restrictions at school and during extracurriculars.
 
Here’s a little update about what we’ve been doing lately in my studio! Pictured below is my new practice incentive board. The charts at the top are for my studio-wide Note Speed competitions, which includes both my online and in-person students. Below that are each of my in-studio student’s ice cream cones. For every week that they accomplish their practice goal, the student gets another scoop on their cone. By the end of fall quarter, if they’ve made their goal of at least seven ice cream scoops on top of the original scoop, we’ll have a little in-studio icecream party during their last lesson of the quarter! I got this idea and cute printable ice cream cones off of laytonmusic.wordpress.com, and it’s genius!

Another thing I’ve worked hard to incorporate this year is engaging materials for my online piano students. With a great music theory computer game found online at topmusic.co, here is one of my kiddos in Utah getting to work on his ledger lines during the last few minutes of his lesson:

In addition to great online materials this year, I’ve made a huge effort to map out the year by creating individualized lesson plans. One blanket characteristic of these lessons is that they all tie into the season and appropriate holidays! September may not have very many “big” holidays, but I was able to find some fantastic materials on wunderkeys.com to tie our lessons into “Talk Like A Pirate” day! Pictured below are some of the fun materials we got to use for that. This week we’ve been doing many Fall themed activities, (all chosen at appropriate learning levels for each student) and next week we’ll be diving into Halloween themed lessons all month! (Can you tell I’m a Halloween fan?)

If you read this post and you’re interested in signing your child up for piano lessons, please contact me through this website, or visit the “schedule” tab where you can click to schedule your free trial lesson!