dawn's piano

I am very excited to make some of my beginning piano games available for sale (except for the one that's free!). Most of these I made by hand in my early teaching years, until very recently when I decided to spruce them up and make them available for other piano teachers & parents to use too.  In this great deal. You get all three of the beginning games together in a studio licensed bundle. Buy Beginning Piano Bundle - $3.00. Musical Memory is a memory matching game that reinforces sight reading  note values  clef signs spatial memory Get an email with your free copy of Musical Memory   Piano Land is a racing game builds confidence in: keyboard awareness & navigation key names landmark notes (optional for beginners) Buy Pianoland - $2.00   Hands Down is a board game that assists students in:   Finger Numbers Key & Note Names Putting fingers on the correct keys with confidence!  Buy Hands Down - $2.00 If you try any of th

A piano has 88 keys, we have 10 fingers, this means finding where to put your hands can sometimes feel pretty difficult for young beginners. I can't count the number of times I've received a midweek text asking "where do we put our hands for X song?" (and I love getting those, honestly, because it means someone is practicing! So keep the questions coming) What this does tell me is that the work & reminders we do on finding positions in lessons isn't always quite enough for students to feel confident finding it again on their own. So, this week's game "Hands Down!" gamifies the skills & routine necessary for young students to place their fingers on the keys with confidence. This is a great way to supplement at home practice. Parents, you can play these early games with your children and partner in their learning process. Allow them explain the rules & teach you about position finding, because in teaching it they will reinforce their ow

This week's beginning piano game I've just always called "Piano Land." And it's one of my go-to games for working on keyboard navigation because it uses the actual keyboard as the playing field. So students are learning their way around all 88 keys, and having fun doing it. For piano parents, this is a terrific, and easy, game that you can play with your child, or that siblings can play together to enhance practice time. The premise is a simple race to see who can reach the other side of the piano first.  Game play is: flip over a card, read the letter and move your game marker to the corresponding key. (For game markers the cuter and more engaging the character, the better! I use keshigomu erasers and my students love them.) Over the years I've added some variations to the deck in the form of landmark notes so students who enjoy it can continue to play Piano Land beyond those first few lessons of learning key names. These also add a fun twist becaus

I hope you all enjoyed our Ship Shape Pianist series, and found some inspiration & motivation to set up 2018 as a productive year of piano study! Heading into February, I thought I'd switch focus to something a little less business-y and a bit more fun. Huzzah! So, this month, I'll be sharing a series of beginning piano games that can be played at home (or in lessons) to supplement early piano study. And the best part, this first one is a free printable! This game is a classic - a Memory Matching game for music. I started making versions & variations of this game by hand almost as soon as I started teaching 12 years ago, and I have found it to be a very versatile teaching tool that can be played alone, one on one, or in a small group. It can be a great reinforcer of general music knowledge & early theory concepts without making a student feel like they're being drilled. Not to mention, it increases spatial memory, which is so important when playing the pian