A Valentine’s Treat: Create Curious Students with Creative Candies

Do you need a fun Valentine’s activity to do with your piano students? These cards are just the ticket.

The idea of these fun candy cards is not just to give you a way to celebrate Valentine’s day in your studio. These are much more than that.

Each card has an expression mark, tempo mark, dynamic or articulation on it. But don’t fear! Your students do not need to know all these terms to be able to use the cards. In fact, these cards can be used with students of any level.

Simply have your student draw cards at random, and use these to spice up a piece they’re working on, or an improvisation. You can explain any of the terms your student hasn’t seen before – and they don’t need to remember them.

This activity is about the possibilities, not the definitions.

How to Use the Creative Candies

• Choose a piece or improvisation pattern to get creative with using the cards.
• Scatter the cards face down on the floor or a table.
• Ask your student to draw 2-3 cards and place them on the music stand.
• Discuss the meaning and possible interpretation of each term.
• Ask your student to play the piece/improvisation incorporating these articulations, dynamics or expression marks.

Assembling the Creative Candies Cards

• Print out the game cards (pages 3-6) double-sided.
• Cut along the dotted lines and laminate if desired.

Psst! If you want more assembly tips, check out last week’s post where I detailed my entire process for printing, laminating and trimming all these fab games.

Learning Objectives for Creative Candies

Creative Candies is about learning and exploring the possibilities of articulation, dynamics and expression marks more than learning definitions for these terms. If you have a more advanced student you can certainly use them to check theory knowledge –but even new students can benefit from exploring these terms with the teacher’s help.

Download Creative Candies

Let me know how you get on!

One of my favourite things is seeing how teachers are using these resources in different ways. Post a photo of these cards in action in the  Vibrant Music Studio Teachers group on Facebook and let me know how it worked for you and your students. 🙂