Early Musical Literacy: 10 Recommended Resources

June 3, 2021 Jennifer Boster

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I’ve been thinking a lot about early music literacy, and the many ways in which we can help our young students learn to read music and become musically literate sight readers. Today I wanted to just share some of my favorite resources for creating great music-readers and sight readers!

Giant Floor Keyboard & Staff banners & beanbags

These are my favorite tools ever for getting kids off the bench and learning so many concepts in a fun way. They help you incorporate movement into musical concepts and are a great big visual for your visual learners. Want to make your own? Use my keyboard graphic and staff graphic to print a 3′ x 8′ banner at the copy store or website of your choice.

Steps & Skips Strips – included in my French Piano Pack & Sight Reading Tricks Pack

Best little flashcards for getting young students reading notes on the staff! See a video demonstration here.

Landmark Notes resources – included in my French Piano Pack

Once students are reading steps and skips, it’s a great time to start introducing some landmark notes. I have a cute landmark notes chart and some fun worksheets (featuring some Paris landmarks!) included in my French Piano Pack.

A Note in Time by Paula Manwaring

This is a GREAT resource for quick naming of notes and note-playing fluency. This resource makes sense to me because it mirrors my kids’ reading homework that they bring home from school – how many words can you read in one minute? How many notes can you name in one minute? It’s a fun challenge for my students to time themselves and see how many notes they can name in one minute.

Piano Safari Sight Reading Cards

This is my go-to for daily sight reading practice. These cards are so easy to implement and they have helped my students improve their sight reading so much!

Note Quest App

I love this app! It is similar in concept to the Piano Safari sight reading cards and is an AWESOME way to improve your students’ sight reading and fluency quickly. Highly recommended!

Notespeed Card Game

This fun card game is like flashcards, but way, way better! A great way to add games and fun to your studio while also adding engagement and learning.

Muscle Builder Books Series

My Muscle Builder Books take young students through all of the keys on the keyboard, teaching scales, chords, arpeggios and more starting from the first lesson. I love getting them familiar with chords and playing ALL over the keyboard, which grows their confidence and sets them up for all sorts of great things, like playing fakebooks and composing!

Easy Fakebooks

Once my students have learned all of the white-key major chords in the Muscle Builder Books series I love to get them started playing from a fakebook. This series of Easy Fakebooks by Hal Leonard is excellent! I didn’t realize until recently how many volumes they have….I kind of want to buy them ALL!! I have the Easy Disney Fake Book and the Easy Children’s Fake Book – both excellent! These are great because they are all in the key of C, giving your students TONS of songs to play in chords they are comfortable in and building their confidence. I start out with them playing the left hand chords all in root position with me playing the melody. We soon learn about chord inversions for playing the chords in easier positions, and then they start playing the melody as well.

Any easy C-position piano pieces for transposing practice

As soon as students know the white-key major chords and five-finger scales, they are ready to start transposing! This is a really fun lightbulb to see go off in your students, when they realize they can play their simple C-position pieces in ANY key!

I hope this gives you some great ideas of ways to improve your students’ musical literacy and sight reading skills! What are your favorite tools and resources for teaching these skills?

Teaching Note-Reading on the Staff Using Steps & Skips

June 1, 2021 Jennifer Boster

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Blog, Featured Posts

Today I thought I would share a little demonstration of some ways I like teach my young students to start reading notes on the staff. I think it’s important to get out of the method books and off of the bench to make the musical concepts make sense and come alive.

My six-year-old daughter and I were reviewing steps and skips on the staff today, so I snapped a few pictures to show you my process:

My Giant Floor Staff Banner and my Giant Floor Keyboard Banner continue to be my favorite resources for little students! They are so much fun and are a great way to teach lots of concepts. First we reviewed steps and skips by walking up and down our staircase in steps and skips, then walked steps and skips on the Giant Floor Keyboard Banner (the banner pictured has the staff on one side and the keyboard on the other!). We played some steps and skips on the piano too!

Using the Giant Floor Staff Banner we counted the lines and spaces, and then practiced pointing and saying in order from bottom to top, “Line, Space, Line, Space…” We added some beanbags on each of the lines and spaces and played the pattern on the piano. My daughter was great at counting how many beanbags and playing that many notes, in steps, on the piano.

Then we took away the line notes and were left with notes in skips on all of the spaces! We played some of these on the piano as well.

Next we used my Steps & Skips Strips. These fun little flashcards can be found in either my French Piano Pack or my Sight Reading Tricks Pack. I love these little flashcards! They show a simplified staff with just 3 lines and 2 spaces, and 3 whole notes on each card in different patterns of steps, skips and repeats.

Students get to choose any starting note and then try to play the notes on the card. I think it’s helpful to sing along “starting note,” “step up,” “skip down,” “same,” etc. to help them. Some students like to sing along too! My daughter is on the timid side so she didn’t sing with me. Here is one of her first attempts:

After a couple of tries she started to get every single one right. It’s so exciting when little ones start to actually read music on the staff – and it can happen early if you teach these concepts in fun and engaging ways!

The fun thing about these cards is that once your students get the hang of them, you can line several up in a row for a bigger challenge! They also translate really well into playing on the actual staff.

I love teaching intervallic reading to my young students. It is just so much more intuitive than memorizing note names. Of course knowing the letter names can come later, but having a strong foundation of intervallic reading will translate to awesome sight readers later on!

Check out all of my great piano teaching resources in my Shop!