dawn's piano

I want to introduce everyone to our composer timeline! Each week on the Studio Facebook page I've been sharing a 'hand-washing song' chosen by one of our students. And today's post is a closer look at what that means, and how that plays into our lessons and musical study. I have a cup full of composer cards (from Vibrant Music Teaching ) and when it is a student's turn, they draw a card, and we search up that composer on Youtube. The student gets to pick a piece from the list of selections available, and that becomes the week's hand-washing song! That music then plays for the next week while students are coming into the studio, I am sanitizing pianos, they are washing their hands, and getting their books prepped for lessons, etc. With the few extra minutes of cleaning procedures that come with operating our studio in a pandemic, this has added a sense of musical purpose and routine to our slightly longer transition time. After we are settled and ready for lesson...

With two months to go until the end of the school year, I wanted to give everyone an update on our ongoing 40 hour Piano Maestro practice challenge. The goal of the challenge is to practice in Piano Maestro for a total of 40 hours during the school year, including time in lessons and time at home. (Original post announcing the challenge here) This effectively means students who complete the challenge will have spent 40 hours sight playing music over the course of the school year, and that kind of time goes a long way towards building those real fluency skills that we want piano students to have.  40 hours comes out to 2,400 minutes, so here is our chart tracking how many minutes each student has practiced.  Our top three Piano Maestro practicers so far are: Brielle with a 1,330 minutes Bronwyn with 1,128 minutes Gentri with 889 minutes And there are a handful of other students in that 800 range as well. There's still a way to go if anyone is to hit that goal of 40 hours, BUT o...