Registration is now open for the two-day workshop Organize Your Life With Notion (Amy Chaplin & Joy Morin)
This a delightfully light and flavorful egg salad recipe for you to try this week. I love the swap of avocado and cottage cheese for what would traditionally be mayonnaise, and the small amount of corn and dried tomatoes gave it a nice twist!
My husband and I, though, have to eat our egg salad on some good sturdy wheat crackers. The lettuce bed doesn’t bring joy to our palette. 🙂
I’m excited to announce that registration is now open for Organize Your Life With Notion, a 2-day online workshop with Joy Morin and myself!
If you’re tired of having your life scattered across multiple websites and productivity apps and would love to see everything you manage on one beautiful dashboard, this workshop is for you!
My friend Joy Morin of ColorinMyPiano.com and I have both been using Notion (an awesome productivity and note-taking app) for several years now and aren’t exaggerating when we say it has changed our lives.
We’ve become pretty passionate about all the ways we’ve utilized Notion to make our lives easier as independent teachers and now are teaming up to offer this special live shop to pass along these methods.
In this 2-day live event, we will help you build a custom, personalized digital workspace in Notion and, in turn, revolutionize the way you work in 2024. (Replays will be available for 6-months.)
You’ll get access to a starter pack of Notion page templates built by us, including things like a prospective student inquiries tracker, student curriculum notes, a studio communication calendar, a tax preparation checklist, and more.
For more details and to register, visit this link.
If you would like to hear a little more from us on how Notion has impacted the way we work, join us for a Live Chat on Instagram on Monday, February 19 @ 1:15 pm Eastern.
Find us on Instagram @pianopantryamy and @joymorinpiano.
P.S. If you would like to hear a little more on how I use Notion, check out these podcast episodes:
The Piano Pantry Podcast Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion
The Piano Pantry Podcast Episode 109 – Joy & Amy: Ways We Used Notion This Week
OK, I have THREE things relating to actress Jennifer Garner to start us off on this week’s list:
(1) Her movie “Family Switch” on Netflix is really fun and totally worth a watch.
(2) I absolutely love following her @Jennifer.Garner on Instagram – she is so fun!
(3) She interviewed Adam Grant on his podcast ReThinking about his new book Hidden Potential. It is AWESOME. It was such a humorous conversation to listen to!
An Introduction to Notion – A Customizable Digital Workspace to Organize Everything In Your Life (Joy Morin)
Google Podcasts is going away in March, but don’t worry, there are plenty of good alternatives! My favorite app for listening is the Overcast app.
Would you like to have another fun musical assignment you can use both in your lessons and to assign for at-home practice, especially for your littles? Expressive movement videos might be a perfect addition to your teaching mix.
Expressive movement takes from philosophies like Dalcroze and gets students moving to music in a way that reflects the patterns, form, and expressive quality of the music.
I first shared about these videos in a full blog post in 2022, which includes a compilation of 15 videos I found on YouTube.
Expressive Movement Videos for Preschool Lessons and Group Classes
Today, I’m expanding on that post to bring you a free downloadable resource to help you assign these videos to students during the week.
This file will be most useful for those who are using a digital practice app that will allow you to bulk-load assignments using CSV files. Don’t worry, though; even if you don’t use an online app, you could still use this spreadsheet to copy and paste text to create your own assignments.
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Years ago, one of my go-to sites for games and activities was Jennifer Fink’s Pianimation. Unfortunately, the site is now closed, but I continue to use several of her resources, including a set of “Listening Race Cards.”
I’ve used these visual listening cards for years but always felt a few elements were lacking in the original set that I wanted to include – such as the terms Duple vs. Triple when talking about a meter and more generalized terms, such as loud vs. soft and separated vs. connected for my very beginners.
Thanks to her inspiration, I finally decided to make my own set of visual listening cards.
These cards are a fun way to help students actively listen to music—especially during group or performance class time. Here’s a photo of some of my students using them (although in this photo, it’s Jennifer’s original set with a couple of additions I had made, so it’s not this exact set I’m sharing with you today).
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Hey, teacher friends!
Today, I’m excited to announce, along with my friend and colleague, Joy Morin of the Color in My Piano Blog, a big event we’ll be hosting in March.
Many of you have come to know and trust me regarding all things workflow, digital organization, and productivity. You’ve seen me blog a lot in the past about using Evernote as an independent teacher and seen the growth of the digital coaching series and retreat.
Joy is known in our circle as an advocate for excellence in piano teaching from many angles and has supported teachers as a blogger, speaker, and more for around 15 years.
Knowing the sucker I was for good organizational apps, in September 2021, Joy introduced me to Notion, a newer app that launched in June 2018.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that it rocked my world!
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Do you still need to put together your holiday recital program? Check out this really cool “vintage” one from Wendy Stevens at Compose Create!
I’m not a huge ginger fan, but I do use it a lot more in the winter for Hot Toddies and such. Even though using the back of a spoon makes it easier, it’s still a bit of a pain. I finally decided to quickly research if it was even needed and found it’s not!
I was so excited to see Sheet Music Plus’s updated website! I think they still have a few kinks to iron out, but it feels much cleaner, modern, and up-to-date.
A good topic in this day and age: Media Literacy in a Digital World (The Newsworthy)
I’ve attended four music teaching events in the past three months: The Piano Conference (NCKP), Joy Morin’s Piano Teacher Retreat, and both the Indiana and Ohio MTA State Conferences.
While it’s fun seeing old friends and colleagues, it’s also refreshing to see new teachers who are experiencing it for the first time. That’s just one reason why attending conferences is beneficial.
Recently, Natalie Weber shared six more great reasons to attend conferences.
If you’re still looking for Halloween resources to use over the next couple of weeks, check out:
The Piano Pantry Podcast Episode 088: Top 10 Halloween Resources
Amazon Prime Big Deal Days is here!
If you don’t know what that is, it’s a special sale event exclusive to Prime members that occurs in the fall, ahead of the holiday shopping season. For October 10 and 11 (2023) only, you can get special savings on thousands of items across all product categories.
As you likely already know, I love shopping and finding things through the recommendation of others, which is why I’m always sharing things with YOU. I thought it might be helpful to pull together a list of some of my favorite items I’ve shared over the years here on the blog and even on the podcast over the past 18 months.
It’s not totally exhaustive, but it’s a solid list of some really great products I think you’ll also love. There are 21 items broken down into 4 categories:
As an Amazon affiliate, I do receive a small percentage of sales through these links. The work of this AD-FREE blog and podcast is only supported through affiliate sales, purchases in the shop, and the new Patreon membership.
Thank you in advance for supporting the work I do here through one or all of these avenues!
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