If you’ve not had a chance to read this series, now is the time, with the start of the new year around the corner. It was the one conference session that made the biggest impact on my studio in the 2015-2016 school year.
This is a guest post by Missouri teacher, Anita Byers (bio at the end). After Anita commented on one of my posts here on Piano Pantry on how she organized her music games in Evernote, I quickly asked her to share. Many thanks to Anita!
As my collection of piano games has grown the past several years, I have needed to organize them in a way that I can find a game that reinforces a certain concept without physically searching through a huge stack!
My goal for this summer was to attack the game monster and make it easy to find and use games during lessons.
I use Evernote in my studio to keep track of weekly lesson plans for each student. I am not sure why it took me so long to realize that Evernote could help organize my game inventory!
I set up a notebook in Evernote and named it “Games.” Then for each game, I added a note.
The information I typed on the note included:
Name of the game
Where I found or purchased the game
Objectives of the game
I took a photo or screenshot of the game board, instructions, and cards. (This was super easy to do with my iPad).
*Note that the following three photos are part of the same note (just taken in 3 screenshots).
I used tags to make categories for each game. For example, tags I used for the Ladybug game were: grand staff, keyboard topography, music alphabet, and staff notation. This will help me as I search for games in my Evernote notebook.
The image below shows a search I did for “keyboard topography.” As you can see, the list of games that I have is shown on the left. I really like that it brings up the photos!
I also took this opportunity to set up a file cabinet to store my games physically, and I added the drawer number right after the game’s name when I entered each note. My games are easy to look up in Evernote and find in their file cabinet.
This system is working great for me so far. Now, I just need to keep up with it as I add new games. It feels so good to have the pile of games organized and the game monster conquered. Thanks, Evernote!
Bonus tip from Amy: since Evernote can also house Microsoft Word, Excel, and Google Drive documents, you could even attach the digital file directly into the note or link directly to the webpage from which you found the game.
Anita Byers is the owner of Anita’s Piano Studio located in Nevada, Missouri. She currently has a full studio of 27 students. She recently retired from Nevada High School after ten years as the choir accompanist.
Canva made a big announcement this week. They’re introducing Canva Print. You can now order print items from your Canva designs. This could be a great tool for creating postcards for student birthdays, posters for recitals, fliers for marketing, and more!
My husband and I haven’t drunk pop (or “soda” depending on where you’re from) in years. Our beverages of choice most of the time are water and unsweet tea. On occasion, I drink a single cup of hot tea and love using this tea stick. Continue reading
Are your students feeling the summer practice blues? I just wrote an article for the Alfred Music Blog on motivating students to practice – check it out!
If you spend any time on Facebook at all, we’ve all seen posts in our news feed from trending sites like Lifebuzz, Buzzfeed, or Boredpanda, such as:
10 Funny Spelling Mistakes.
or
18 Funny Spelling Errors Children Make That Made Me Burst Out Laughing.
While I find those types of posts typically annoying, sometimes they can give us a good chuckle.
Spelling and grammatical errors are good for a little social media humor, but today I want to share with you a tool that can save us, as working professionals, from becoming the next find on Buzzfeed.
I recommended this tool on my Resources page but wanted to explain in more detail why it’s such an important and useful to me as an independent music professional. Continue reading
A friend of mine had a minor “accident” with a Microplane grater (haven’t we all) to the point she had to go to the emergency room. In all seriousness (and a little humor), I gift-mailed her this Microplane cut-protection glove. I’ve had one for years after learning my own lesson. You only need one to protect those precious piano hands!
Another learn to play piano all-by-myself app is here. Have you heard of Skoove Piano? Not the type of app we as teachers need but it’s always nice to know what’s out there!
Music Moves for Piano has a new website and it looks great! Congratulations to Marilyn Lowe.
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Included in our meals this week was Nom Nom Paleo’s delicious Wonton Meatballs, and Winning Deviled Ham Salad. I prefer eating ham salad with hearty crackers rather than in sandwich form. The maple syrup and sriracha make this recipe unique.
A little treat was found in Diary -Free Fudge Popsusing these awesome Tovolo Ice Pop Molds. I was considering more of a round mold but I thought that might be harder to eat. Plus, the fact that you can pull them out of the freezer individually made them my winner.
The National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogyis just around the corner. This biennial conference, which was put on by The Francis Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy, is always held in Lombard, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
The 2015 event was my first NCKP experience, and I was hooked. Since I’m only a 3-4 hour drive away, I plan on attending every one from now on!
After my first Piano Pantry reader’s dinner at MTNA in Baltimore, I was excited to get the chance to offer something again at NCKP. This time, I’m honored to team up with Tim Topham, who’s making the trek all the way from Australia for this great conference.
This week is a special round-up of finds. I have been a content junkie for a long time. I’m slowing down, but I couldn’t manage the number of sites I follow without my RSS reader, Feedly.
There are several sites I have been following for years that do similar weekend roundups that inspired me to start my Friday Finds for teachers. Today I share those favorites with you.
As I was driving to my studio this morning I was thinking about the early years of piano instruction. While they’re often the hardest for parents and children to get through, the first few months and years are the most important for several reasons.
First, we must engage our music students in a way that fosters a love of and a successful experienceatmaking music. Second, we must develop a healthy technique so they have freedom at the piano from the start. Third, we need to introduce students to a variety of sounds, tonalities, and meters so they can hear, think, and engage in music with understanding.
That’s a whole lot of goodness wrapped up into a student’s first experience at the piano!
Today I’m to going to share my thoughts on a book called Little Gems for Pianoand how rote pieces like these can cover all three of these critical areas in one. We will focus especially on the last one as it is part of the philosophy I am slowing working to incorporate in my teaching called Music Learning Theory (MLT) by the late Dr. Edwin Gordon.
Our beverages of choice most of the time are water and unsweet tea. On occasion, I drink a single cup of hot tea and love using 
