FREEBIE: Key Signature Flashcards & Name That Key Worksheet

June 27, 2020 Jennifer Boster

I’ve got a new freebie for you today! It is so important to help our students understand key signatures, including knowing the order of sharps and flats, understanding relative minor keys and remembering the rules for identifying keys with sharp or flat key signatures. Understanding the circle of 5ths is important, of course, but sometimes I think that simply drilling key signatures over and over is the best way to remember them.

I created these key signature flashcards to help students practice naming the major and minor keys associated with each key signature, and decided to give them to you as a free download! You can either print the answers on the back (make sure you use cardstock – thicker paper will make sure that you can’t see the answer through the card!), or you might want to print the answers separately and use them as a memory match game to match up the key signatures to their associated major and minor keys! You can easily use them during online lessons as well, simply hold the cards up to the screen to quiz your students.

This download also includes a Name That Key worksheet so your students can practice at home. You could even time them and see how fast they can name all of the keys.

Grab your free download here!

New Freebie: Musical Memory Game

February 7, 2013 Jennifer Boster

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Sometimes young students need a more exciting way to learn their notes on the staff. I mean, flashcards are great and all, but can get a little old. This week I made a little memory matching game for a student who needed a new way to work on her notes. This game is super simple (and let’s admit it, it really isn’t THAT different from actual flashcards, but puts a new twist on it!) and it’s a nice way to shake things up a bit. Plus you get to get off of the bench for this one (a definite plus!)

Now available on my “Free Printables” page is a Musical Memory game.

My daughter was more than obliged to get in the picture and demonstrate the game!

Students match Middle C Position notes to their letter names

I laminated mine with my laminator and love how they turned out! These will last for a long time.

Whatever activities you decide to use with your young students, I encourage you to get off of the bench more often and find new ways to bring fun and excitement into lessons!

Download the musical memory game here or visit my Free Printables page. Enjoy!

Also, be sure to enter our giveaway for a free Valentines Day preschool music lesson plan! Giveaway ends Friday, February 8 at 10:00 pm Central Time.

Teaching Tip Tuesday: Teach those chords!

October 16, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Teaching Tip #10: Teach those chords!

I have recently discovered the importance of teaching chords. Lately I have been really trying to get all of my students, all ages, playing major and minor chords all over the piano and in different inversions. A huge help in this has been in using my technique booklets – My Muscle Builders Book and My Muscle Builders Book 2. My students have amazed me in their chord-playing and I really think it is helping them become overall better musicians.

Understanding and being able to easily play chords, in different inversions, helps students in learning their pieces. SO, so often their method book pieces have a melody line in the right hand and chords in the left hand (whether block chords, broken chords, or whatever figuration the notes are in). When students don’t understand chords well, each measure can be a struggle to learn. Many students need to stop and “figure out” the notes of each measure. BUT, if they are good at chord-reading and have a good understanding of primary chords used in a key, all you need to do is have them take a look at the piece and point out the basic harmonies. They will see that a piece may only consist of C, F and G7 chords, and will be able to learn it SO much faster because they are already pros at playing those chords.

Many of my students have also started playing a bit from fakebooks, and it is so fun to see them use their chord-playing knowledge to fill in the harmony (all on their own!!) of a fun, familiar song. I really have been enjoying this awesome Disney Fake Book (Fake Books), and it has a great variety of songs, some easier ones that my students have been enjoying, and some harder ones that I have been having a lot of fun with as well!

So teach those chords! Let’s create a generation of great, well-rounded musicians, shall we?

Mighty Musicians! (…plus a giveaway!!)

July 15, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Happy Saturday!

Well as some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been around a lot lately. I’ve been a bit busy….my friend Nichole and I recently wrote a whole new curriculum and taught a new music class for 5- and 6-year-olds. We call it Mighty Musicians and it was a big success! We are so excited to share it with you all, and I’ve been working like crazy getting these lesson plans all ready to go.

Our Mighty Musicians class is similar to the Early Explorers course (and I *promise* to have more of those lesson plans available soon as well!), but geared toward those 5- and 6-year-olds who are able to catch on and then apply the musical concepts a little more quickly than the preschoolers. This class is very fun, and it involves lots of singing and movement and creative play with the music, but it also has some basic piano technique elements involved to give those kids a great and fun intro to piano lessons! At each class, students get to play simple pre-staff notation pieces at the piano, and they also get to compose their very own songs! We learn about some famous composers and their music and just have a blast singing and moving and listening.

We have five lesson plans that will soon be available for this class (for either a week-long camp or a five-week course). Each lesson is for a one-hour session. Our plan is to get a new one up and available each week….so stay tuned!

TODAY, the first lesson plan, Night & Day: Music Tells a Story, is available for purchase on my “Lesson Plans for Sale” page, and we will also be giving away ONE free copy to a lucky reader!!

The format of the lesson plan is a downloadable e-book, which is awesome because once you purchase it you can print out as many copies of the pages as you need for your class. It is 82 pages chock full of awesomeness…aside from the actual lesson plan and teacher’s guide, there are plenty of resources, printables, songs, clipart, and visual aids, and it also includes a ten-page student take-home book! We think you’re going to love it 🙂

So a little about this lesson plan – we talk about how music tells a story! We do this all within the fun theme of “Night & Day.” We go over some basic musical elements, learn a little about Edvard Grieg and a couple of his famous pieces, sing and move to his music, improvise at the piano, write our own compositions using the musical elements we learned about, learn some basic keyboard topography and play a simple piano piece!

Here are some sneak peeks into the lesson plan and its contents –

So would you like to win a FREE copy of this lesson plan? Just leave a comment! You may receive ONE extra entry into the giveaway by posting about this giveaway on your blog or facebook page (leave an extra comment to let me know you did it). Giveaway ends on Friday, July 20 at 11:59 pm Central time. I’ll announce the winner next Saturday.

Upside-Down Compositions

April 26, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Sometimes my best (and most successful) teaching ideas are the spur-of-the-moment ones that I just sort of think up at the last second. Today I had a student arrive without her books (and she had not practiced much this week), so I grabbed my staff flannel board and some black felt notes.

I first had her review the notes in a C Major five-finger scale (a great note-reading review as well as a review of her scales!) by building the scale on the flannel board. I then had her build a C Major chord as well (my students surprisingly mix up chords and arpeggios all the time – I tell them to sing “ar – pe – ggio!” while playing the three notes of the arpeggio, and to sing “chord” when playing a chord – it seems to help a bit!).

I then allowed her to make up her own short song with any notes in the bass clef. She LOVED this (I have found that most young children LOVE making up their own music….let’s take that and run with it, shall we??) and came up with this song:

I then had her play it on the piano (an EXCELLENT note-reading exercise – and she did very well considering she is in level 2 of Faber’s My First Piano Adventures…barely into note reading!). I told her afterwards that we were going to do something super cool with her song. I added an upside-down treble clef at the end of her song…

…and then flipped the whole thing over!

She was excited to see that this had created an entirely new song in the treble clef! We had fun playing it and seeing what it sounded like (naming all the notes as we went…great review!).

I decided to send her home with some blank staff paper and I assigned her to write a short song (using the notes of a predetermined five-finger scale, to keep it simple and easy to play in one hand position), and then to flip it over and play the upside-down version!

Here is one we did in the C Major five-finger position:

You flip it over and you’re in a nice F position – easy for small hands.

Voila – a fun and simple note-reading/five-finger scale/composition exercise! Goodnight all!

Giant Floor Staff!

April 20, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Happy Friday everyone! I hope you’re all having a lovely day and have a fun weekend planned. As for me, I am sitting here in my pajamas enjoying the beginning of my weekend and a day off from teaching piano.

Those of you who have purchased my graphic to make a Giant Floor Keyboard will be excited to hear that I now have a Giant Floor Staff graphic available! My vinyl floor staff turned out great and I am so excited to use it in my music classes and camps! I have already gotten some good use out of it in my private lessons. It is so great to have a super fun and different way to help my students learn the notes on the staff, which allows them to get off of the bench and move around.

I debated about putting a clef on there or not…and ended up not. I wanted to be able to use it for bass clef or treble clef notes. I think I may try to make some big clefs that I can put on there when needed, but for now it has worked fine without.

It is nice and big (about 90 inches long 28 inches tall, not including the white border) and is perfect for children to walk, stand, jump, and run on (I know this because my four-year-old son got some great use out of it this morning….also, it is nice and sturdy!!)

Just like my Giant Floor Keyboard, I had it made on www.bannersonthecheap.com. They have excellent prices, high-quality products and super fast delivery time. Totally an awesome deal, and the ease and quality is worth the money, in my opinion!

I created my own custom-designed 3′ x 8′ banner by uploading my staff image. Stretch the image to fill the banner area (leaving a small white margin around the outside, if desired) and select the box to center it horizontally. Click “Save and Continue” and you are all set to order your Giant Floor Staff. Easy peasy.

You can use fun letter name beanbags…

…colorful craft foam notes (hmmm, makes me want to play Twister)…

…or simply allow children to walk right on there and be the notes themselves!

Students of all ages and levels (even preschoolers) will get so much use out of this giant staff!

The graphic is available for purchase here as well as on the “Printables & Downloads” page.

Giant Floor Staff Graphic
$3.00

New Printable: Musical Easter Egg Hunt

March 29, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Today I’d like to share a fun new printable! This “Musical Easter Egg Hunt” is the perfect springtime flashcard game for your elementary-level piano students. It’s based off this version of the game that I threw together last year. I have just used it in private lessons with my young students, but it would also be great as a group activity. Hope you enjoy!

You may download the file here, or you can find it on the “Printables & Downloads” page.

fun with short and long notes!

June 22, 2011 Jennifer Boster

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At our piano camp today we talked about how some notes are short and others are LONG. We had some fun playing some short-sounding rhythm instruments (like drums and rhythm sticks) and some LONG instrument sounds (like a rain stick!), and also playing short and long on the piano.

I love the little song in Faber’s My First Piano Adventures Lesson Book 1 called “Will You Play?” – students get to sit down at the piano and improvise a super fun duet with the teacher, following directions such as “will you play some white keys softly please?”, “will you play some long sounds now with me?” and “will you play some short sounds now with me?” The kids loved playing this fun song, and did so well playing long sounds and short sounds!

And because there is not much that is more fun for kids than a bottle of Elmer’s glue and a whole bunch of craft supplies (seriously, they were in heaven!) we then moved to the table where we learned about Beethoven’s Symphony #5, and the kids got to pick short things and long things to “notate” the theme of the symphony! Pom poms, marshmallows, and googly eyes are perfect for short notes, while popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and pasta are great long notes! We sang along as we listened to the music – “short-short-short-LOOOONG….” and I think the kids enjoyed learning that Beethoven started piano lessons when he was four years old – just like many of them!

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Musical Easter Egg Hunt

April 19, 2011 Jennifer Boster

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I am so glad to be a part of this wonderful online network of piano teaching bloggers, because I am so grateful for all of the wonderful ideas you all share!

This morning I was reading this post on Heidi’s Piano Studio, and decided to use her great idea and adapt it for my preschool student who came later this morning. (Thanks, Heidi!!)

I got out my stash of colorful craft foam (seriously, it is the best stuff!), some paper, a pen, some tape, and an egg-shaped cookie cutter…

…and made these fun Easter egg preschool flashcards!

I included things that we have learned during lessons in the past little while, including things such as:

rhythms to clap, including rests
line notes vs. space notes
steps and skips
treble clef and bass clef
the staff
finger numbers
high notes & low notes on the staff
Presto and Adagio

I hid them around the room, and my student had lots of fun hunting for eggs and then identifying the things on the back! My three-year-old son got his turn after my student left, and he loved it as well!

After we found all of the eggs, we lined up the rhythm eggs and tried clapping them in different orders, and playing notes on the piano in the correct rhythm.

I love that with a little creativity, you can turn a boring old flashcard exercise into a fun, memorable learning activity!

Lines & Spaces and Steps & Skips

April 1, 2011 Jennifer Boster

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I love it when last-minute ideas turn out to be the funnest activities for students! To teach about lines and spaces and steps and skips, I got out the ol’ trusty masking tape and slapped it on the rug to make a quick musical staff. I cut out notes out of sheets of craft foam (LOVE that stuff!) and voila – a fun musical staff game!

Here is my giant musical staff. Please excuse the graininess/yellowness of the photo, and the fact that I can’t seem to get it to rotate!

I used this fun game for preschoolers. We had already introduced the staff, and how notes can be high or low. We first practiced walking up the staff in steps – line, space, line, space, line space (this was fun to tip-toe!) – and in skips – line, line, line or space, space, space (hopping works well)! We also played each on the piano – steps by playing every single note going up or down, and skips by playing every other note. We then practiced putting notes on the staff in steps or skips. The kids loved walking on their notes after they placed them on the staff, as I played the steps or skips on the piano. We then played a game where I would hand them a note and call out “step!” or “skip!” and they would have to place the next note on the correct line or space. It was fun with two kids at a time – they started on a note at the bottom of the staff, and I would hand each a note and call out “step” or “skip” and they would use their notes to try and get across the staff (wouldn’t it be fun to pretend the staff was a river to cross?).

As I was playing this game with a student who loves to get stickers as rewards, I had a sudden stroke of genius as I drew a staff on her assignment sheet and had her put her little circle stickers on the staff on lines or spaces, as if they were musical notes. So fun!