Who doesn’t love a good piano teaching game? We all love bringing something new to lessons to keep our students interested and excited about coming to lessons week after week. But who isn’t too keen on a lot of set-up? Busy piano teachers.
So, here’s a simple, yet very fun game you can play with your piano students to make it easy and fun for them to drill specific measures in their current piano piece.
Sticky Practice Game Play
The beautiful thing about this game is that it only requires materials you likely already have beside your piano. However, when used as a game-based repetition tool, your piano students will be instantly motivated!
To play, you’ll need:
1. A blank piece of paper with enough room for 3 rows of 3 post-it notes (like a tic-tac-toe board).
2. A felt pen
3. A pack of 3 inch square post-it notes
Before you play:
Write numbers on each of the post-it notes that correspond with measure numbers in your students’ piece. Choose specific measures that you’d like them to drill.
Game Play:
You and your student simply play Tic Tac Toe – one person is x’s and one is o’s. You’re looking to connect 3 horizontally, vertically or diagonally to be the winner. However, before you or your student can place an X or an O on a square, the student first needs to play the measure indicated on the sticky note. Once the measure has been played, remove the sticky note and you or your student can draw their X or O on the space underneath.
You can make this game more challenging by also writing a number of repetitions on the sticky note (ie. Measure 43 three times!) You can also save paper by laminating the piece of paper and using dry erase markers for repeated game play.
I’ve been playing this game in lesson with my students this week and they’re actually begging to play it again and again. This is a perfect pre-recital activity as it forces them to start at different points in their piece, encourages repeated practice of any “tricky” sections and helps to perfect the piece as a whole. Simple, almost no set up and lots of fun. Enjoy!
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