dawn's piano

It’s a new year and we’re turning a new page - in our studio binders!  Did you know that student binders are our main throughway for communication on weekly assignments between student, teacher, and parent? Every week we write an assignment sheet detailing WHAT, and often HOW, a student should practice that week. Following these assignments plays a key role in practicing intentionally to establish consistent progress! There’s space to track daily practices throughout the week, and a box to add questions or a quick note to let me know how practice went.  But I’ve been noticing this school year in particular, that the binder is barely on many students’ radar despite my weekly reminders at lessons. This tells me I need to do a better job highlighting their importance for both piano kids and studio parents to be checking in on.  Enter our January challenge! Its a ‘Check Your Binder' challenge in which I hide a silly word in the written assignment each week during the month of...

In the final week of lessons for the year, after our big Christmas Festival concert is wrapped up, I like to unwind from the intensity of the last few weeks of concert prep and change up our usual lesson plan.  During this final week of lessons for the calendar year, we usually play through our holiday playlists (using Wendy Stevens' Seasonal Songs to Share resource ), maybe take a video of a favorites to share via the studio’s social media pages, and make a music centered holiday craft! This year for our craft I mocked up a quick Christmas Card, and I’m sharing a free template below in case anyone else would like to use it! Students will be filling in the music notes for the melody of the opening phrase of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ and can decorate the card in any way they like beyond that. I picked up some festive colored envelopes, and just like that we’ve got a simple lesson activity that can be kept or gifted depending on each student’s preference!  If you’d like to...

Another summertime means another season spent composing original music!  The studio had 30 continuing students for lessons this summer, so we've got 30 brand new, original student compositions to share with you today.  You can learn more about our annual Young Composers project here.   All the student compositions have been notated and recorded, and then collected and published as a book and audio album below. We hope you enjoy the music!  Click here or the image above to view the book of sheet music. Use the player below to listen to the audio tracks from this year, or y ou can find all the tracks in this folder .  Dawn's Piano · Young Composers 2025

Every summer at Dawn's Piano, students who are continuing lessons from the previous school year have the opportunity to compose, notate and record original music with our Young Composers program. At the end of the summer we collect the sheet music into a single book file, and upload the audio tracks of each student piece into an album, and that's what we're sharing with you today!  Composing music is a wonderful way to exercise some creativity and enjoy a change of focus during summer lessons, while putting into practice the music theory understanding that students have built during the school year. It's one of my favorite times in the studio year, and many students also highly anticipate this season of creativity, and enjoy getting to take ownership of their musical journey in a new way. It is important to me that the equipment and programs we use for this project are accessible for any students who would like to continue composing on their own. So  student notation i...

Students have been working on these compositions throughout the summer session, and today's the day we get to share them with you!  Young Composers is an annual summertime project in our studio that started back in 2013. All continuing students (which just means students who have taken lessons with the studio heading into that summer) work on creating an original piece of music. Then they notate it, and in the final week of lessons we have a recording session to lay down the tracks of their pieces.  Composing is such a valuable exercise for music students. It gives them a chance to take a little extra ownership of their musical journey and to put what we learn about music theory throughout the year into practice from a new angle. As a teacher, I enjoy seeing the different approaches that students take to composing, and what they draw inspiration from.  Be sure to let these young pianists know how much you appreciated their music the next time you see them. And for any pia...

They say necessity is the mother of invention. And this was certainly true this past Monday when my studio had it's July music theory Piano Party coming up on the schedule. I looked at the student RSVP's and noticed at least half of the group would be brand-new beginners with just a couple of lessons experience, half would be early intermediates, with a few late beginners thrown in. Choosing a game that would be engaging and level appropriate for all of them to play together was going to take some thinking.  Rhythm review is always a good way to go for a multi-level activity. I flipped through the body percussion activities, rhythm cups etc that I had on hand and nothing was exactly what I wanted. But I did have a large stack of rhythm cups with various note values drawn on them for quarter, half and whole notes that I've used for a spin off of this stacking game . Using those, I came up with my Rhythm Relay game.  The object:  Be the first team to collect rhythm cup...

In the Spring of each year students in our studio have the opportunity to participate in KMTA's Music Progressions. This is a musicianship evaluation that has 10 progressive levels, I won't get too far into the particulars because you can find  more information here.  But a big part of that musicianship is demonstrating an understanding of Music Theory both on paper and by analyzing what we are hearing. This blog post is a resource round-up of some leveled exercises that can help build these Theory & Listening skills.  All these exercises have been created on MusicTheory.net , which is an excellent free resource for teachers and students alike. These are designed to be a quick review or check-in on a concept, so each exercise is only 10 questions. And they don't even require you being near a piano. If your piano kid tries some, and would like to email me the codes with their scores, please do! I'll enjoy seeing their progress. Level 1 - Note names on keyboard and s...