Ear Training Coloring Clapback Pages For Primer And Level 1 Students

Coloring is a peaceful activity. If your piano students are feeling stressed out it can give them a sense of control. After all, coloring simply requires kids to stay within the lines.

But it wouldn’t be a piano lesson if your students spent their time coloring random pages. So, we’ve designed an activity that incorporates coloring into rhythm work.

If you’re like many piano teachers, you probably begin or end piano lessons with a few minutes of clapbacks for ear training. But, week after week of regular old clapbacks can get a little boring for students (and teachers!)

And that’s where the coloring comes in!

Today’s ear-training coloring activities are designed to jazz up piano lesson clapbacks. They can be played during online lessons or offline with the help of a musical parent at home.

Why Bother With Piano Lesson Clapbacks?

Some piano activities are so universal to the lesson experience that we rarely consider why we perform them in the first place.

Clapbacks are one such activity.

Every teacher plays piano lesson clapback games with their students. We know that they improve rhythm. But rhythm is a pretty broad topic. So, what exactly are clapbacks doing for our piano students.

Well, for primer and level 1 piano students, clapbacks are really about improving rhythmic accuracy. If your studio is full of young piano students, then you know that these kids are mostly focused on note reading… rhythm is an afterthought.

Their idea of success is hitting the correct key for each note in a piano piece. Whether or not the note is a half note, quarter note, or whole note is deemed irrelevant by our little kiddos 🙂

And this is where we find the true value in piano lesson clapbacks.

When you play clapback games with piano students, note reading is removed from the equation, and students are solely focused on rhythm and note duration.

Of course, the benefit of piano lesson clapbacks is only achieved if you are a stickler for accuracy. If students get away with inaccurate clapbacks then they are being denied the opportunity to improve precision in their piano playing.

Below we are sharing an activity to bring even more fun to clapbacks.

Let’s Put Some Color In Our Clapbacks!

Today’s set of three Ear Training Clapback Activities are designed for piano students working in our WunderKeys Primer Piano Series and our WunderKeys Elementary Piano Level 1 Series.

When using the activities during online piano lessons you will need a copy of the printables and your piano students will need copies of the printables AND a selection of crayons.

How To Play

When your student is ready to begin, clap a measure of rhythm found inside one of the crayon images on your printable. Next, instruct your student to clap the rhythm back and then locate the corresponding rhythm in a crayon image found on her printable. The corresponding crayon image will be labeled with a color name. Have your student use this crayon color to color in the corresponding crayon image.

Continue playing until your student has colored in every crayon on her printable.

Where To Find Today’s Piano Lesson Clapbacks Activity

Today’s printables can be downloaded from Teach Piano Today’s Homework Pages (click the pink button below). When you access our homework pages you’ll find 40 more activities that you can download, print, or email.