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...

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...

This last post in the Ship Shape Pianist series is a little different because it's for the piano teachers & small business owners out there who follow the blog. Before I dive in, I feel it is most important to say that if the idea of running your business' online presence doesn't bring you joy, outsource it. Do the things in the running of your business that you really like doing and hire someone else to do the rest. Don't burn yourself out. On the other hand, If you're like me and you like the creative challenge of running your online brand, but are having a difficult time keeping all the pieces moving, in this post, I am sharing the things that have helped me go from a twice a year blogger to being able to keep to a once a week schedule. The tricks that helped me move from a meager handful of student videos & photos on the Dawn's Piano Facebook & Instagram accounts over the last several years to several per week this past year. So, here goes: ...

I think when people envision piano practice, they see you sitting down and playing through pieces beginning to end. It's a completely understandable assumption, and this is also what our students think until we teach them otherwise. The reality is that a good, effective & dedicated practice has a lot of work that isn't just playing through pieces. So the third post of the Ship Shape Pianist series gives you 5 tips to making your practice more effective for 2018. If you want to see some real progress in your playing, try implementing these. If you aren't sure what resources to use for any of these, just ask your teacher what they'd recommend. 1. Scales & Technic: Warm up your fingers & your brain with some scales & arpeggios. Practice them at different tempos from slow & deliberate to very quickly. Play them legato & staccato, or try a swing or drop-roll pattern. Work on finger placement & thinking ahead to eliminate any pausing. Then tr...

Ever had an entire week go by, remember it's piano lesson day, and then with horror realize you haven't opened a single piano book since the last lesson? You're not alone, so in our second post of the Ship Shape Pianist series, I'm sharing 4 tips to help you schedule piano practice and stick to it. 1. Schedule a set time. Consistent practices throughout the week are much more effective than a binge practice every so often. Sit down, look at your weekly schedule, and set a regular time that piano practice will happen, even if all you can comfortably manage is a 10-15 min window a few days a week. Then stick to it.    2. Set reminders. Whatever system you use for keeping your piano kids on a schedule, add piano practice to it. If you use physical planners, add piano practice at your chosen time. If using a digital calendar, set alerts or reminders. Or, if you need to practice after brushing teeth, put a "Practice Piano!" sticky note on the bathroom mirror...