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Violin Cutout for Beginner Students
Laurie Niles of violinist.com has created a small violin cutout to go with her ‘Rest Position Song’ that she teaches beginner violin students. She teaches at a school where the students learned to take care of an ‘egg carton’ violin to begin with. Then they progressed to ‘real’ violins. I haven’t made an egg carton violin yet, […]
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Head, Shoulders, Knees and…SURPRISE!
I have sung this with my 4-5 year old students, and they love it. It’s great for when they’re getting just a little bit restless, their arms are getting sore and we just need to do an action song. I whip this one out (he is usually all set up ready to go anyway), then […]
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Recognising High and Low
This is a great game for little peoples. I am going to play it today with my young violin students. I am going to show them a picture and they have to tell me whether it is “high” or “low” Then we will play a high or a low sound on our violins. It’s a […]
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Kinder Beat – teaching 18 month to 3 year olds
Posted 12 February 2010 on my music blog:- A few years ago I was introduced to Kinder Beat. A music course aimed specifically at 3 to 4 year olds. I was curious as I was teaching piano to a couple of littlies and was having a few little problems with them, mainly at how to […]
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Holiday Music Camp – Younger Beginners (Piano) – 1 hour
The outline for my younger beginner piano students was as follows:- Game: Snap with Bug Flash Cards (found on Susan Paradis’ website) here: Large fly flash cards and here for the ones on the keyboard: Keyboard Fly Flash Cards. We played Concentration/Memory, and the students used large green fly swatters when they got a match. It […]
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Counts and Chocolate Cake
Ever had trouble remembering the note counts/values? When I only had a couple of students, and they were beginners, I would bake a cake (or cupcakes) and we would dissect them into Semibreves, Minims and Crotchets (aka whole notes, half notes and quarter notes). Now I just talk about the visual image to my students, […]
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Spelling Bee – violin game
My son was recently in a Spelling Bee competition at his school and did really well (was in the final top 10 – so proud of him!). I previously had my piano students play a game with cards involving words you could spell with the letters ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’ and ‘G’. The […]
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Giant Action Cards – Beginner Violin game
I remember using some giant cards I would hold up to teach a song to a group of students. The cards had things like ‘Sing Loud, Sing Soft, Ice-cream Lovers Sing, Stand up to Sing, Sit Down to Sing’ etc each with a different picture. I decided to make up my own set of giant […]
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The Music Alphabet Poster
Here’s something to laminate and use with your students if they are having trouble remembering the musical alphabet. You can sing the standard ‘Alphabet song’ simply repeating these 7 letters over and over throughout the song. How to vary:- Start from ‘A’ and keep working your way around. Start from any other letter and keep […]
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Beginner violin symbols and notes game ‘Lesson 1 A Tune A Day’ Part 1
Little violinists (ie 3 year olds) aren’t often able to read words yet but they are quite clever at recognising symbols and patterns. I use different books for different students, depending on their needs and in part, what books I have available at the time. The music school I work for part time sprung a […]
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