At the start of the new year, one of the first things we do is go over the piano posture or how to sit at the piano. We start by swinging our arms around to make them free of tension, then practice lifting and dropping them so we can feel the freedom of movement….
Practice & Performance
Effective piano practice is one of my passions as a piano teacher. Make the most out of your students' practice time with these freebies, ideas and insights.
Step-by-Step to a Fantastic Piano Recital (Part 2)
Are you getting ready for a piano studio recital? Those final few weeks before the big day are when things really come to crunch time. In my last article, I shared the first part of this checklist. Go back and read the first part if you haven’t already and make sure everything is in place….
CKQC040: Jungle Jump game for learning beginning note names
Jungle Jump is a fun game that I created for Vibrant Music Teaching members earlier this year to work on note names around middle C. This is a fun way for beginning students to work on note naming and it’s perfect for buddy lessons (learn more about buddy lessons here) with beginning piano students….
Step-by-Step to a Fantastic Piano Recital (Part 1)
Putting together a piano recital for your students is a fantastic way to give them a performance opportunity and celebrate all the progress they’re making. But it’s not easy! There are lots of moving parts and so many things to remember. Let me take you step-by-step through the entire process so that you know you…
How to Create Piano Student Memorisation Masters
There are two camps of piano teachers when it comes to piano student memorisation: those who grew up memorising their own music, and those who didn’t. For those who memorised pieces as a child, the struggle is often with their students for whom memorisation just doesn’t come naturally, because it did for them. For those…
Bringing Music History to Life Part 2: Growing Composer Timeline
Displaying a composer timeline in your studio is one handy way to make sure music history is always on show. However…it doesn’t help much if it just blends into the background, as displays like this often do. That’s why I’ve settled on a growing composer timeline this year. 🙂 My composer timeline is made out…
Bringing Music History to Life Part 1: Composer Assignment Sheets
Do you have trouble fitting music history into your lessons? It can be hard to cram in yet another thing…but our students need some music history knowledge to put their repertoire into context. In this post, I gave you 9 ways to teach music history to piano students but I want to add one more…
3 Ideas for Helping Piano Students with Right/Left Coordination
One of the beginning concepts that can trip young piano students up is right/left coordination. If they don’t know which hand is playing (or which hand is right/left in the first place!) they can feel a bit lost. > Many method books (such as my favourite: Piano Safari) start out with piece (or at least…
9 Fun Ways to Teach Music History to Piano Students
Are you looking for fun ways to teach music history to piano students? Trying to integrate music history into games or activities so that your students get a rich well-rounded music education? I’ve got you covered. There are so many different aspects of music that we need to teach. Music history tends to be one…
Creating Piano Practice Pros Part 4: The 3 Levels of Piano Practice
We all know that there’s practice, and then there’s practice. What many students think of as practice is actually just playing. They play each piece from start to finish, maybe a couple of times, then they call it a day. That’s not really practice. It’s basically a humongous waste of their time. Sure, they’ll eventually…
