Friday Finds #89: Easter Week

March 30, 2018
by Amy
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1 – Easter-Themed Teaching Aids

Susan Paradis has several Easter-themed worksheets and games on her website. One of my favorites is the Bunny Basics note-naming worksheet.

 

2 – Tax Tips

My husband and I just wrapped-up and submitted our 2017 taxes. We were later than we like to be (something called building a house yourself might be the cause of that :-). To glean a few extra tips, check out Ed Pearlman’s article on Music Teachers Helper Blog Tax Tips for Musicians.

 

3 – Holy Week

A visualization of Passion Week.
Holy week prayers.
Maundy Thursday explained.
On the etymology of the word Easter.

 

4 – Avoid Buyer’s Remorse

I met a teacher at the MTNA Conference who introduced me to her website Piano iPad Apps. This is a great resource site as she has a lot of videos that walk you through apps. Seeing these videos can help you make a decision whether or not certain apps might be for you, especially if they’re ones you have to purchase.

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Germ-Alert: A Teachers Guide to Staying Healthy

January 19, 2018
by Amy
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Getting sick.  Ugh. The only good part of being sick is you can watch endless episodes of your favorite show while wallowing in your misery on the couch at home.

Otherwise, it’s the nemesis of every teacher. Why? Because it’s more of a pain to catch up on life than it is to simply have a normal day.

The flu is running rampant this year. Twenty percent of my students canceled last week from either being sick or having a family member sick (in which case they didn’t want to spread it around-thank you!).

Yes, getting sick as a teacher is often the result of exposure to so many students every week. More so than that, though, I’m more likely to get sick when I’ve not been taking care of myself. That could be lack of sleep, stress, or getting out of the habit of physical activity and/or taking daily supplements.

Today I want to share a few ways we can be proactive in our studios and with our personal health – especially during the winter months when we’re on high “germ alert.”

*Disclaimer: All advice and opinions posted here are simply from my own experiences. I am not a health professional nor do I claim to be.

Clean Environment

Keep your studio and teaching area clean. Regularly clean areas touched by students including door handles, computer keyboard and mouse, and of course the bathroom.

Clean Piano

I’ve never had luck with remembering to enforce this, but having students wash their hands with soap and water before coming to the piano would be ideal.

Avoid hand sanitizer as it has proven less effective than good old soap. I’ve also been told (by my piano tuner) that hands covered in hand sanitizer could possibly cause cracks in the piano key surface. The same goes for antibacterial wipes.

Keep it simple. Stash a cloth nearby and regularly wipe down the piano keys. A lightly sprayed cotton cloth with a vinegar-water mixture would suffice, or try a cleaning cloth such as the Guardsman Dusting Cloth.

The Guardsman cloth is a wonderful, gentle cloth that won’t scratch your piano and has a very lightly tacky surface that is brilliant at collecting dust. Find them at your local hardware.

You could even consider using the Norwex Antimicrobial Window Polishing Cloth for the keys, but I would not recommend using it or any of the other Norwex rags on the body of the piano as I would be afraid their material might scratch the surface.

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Friday Finds #79: The 12 Days of Christmas: 11 Finds for the New Year

January 5, 2018
by Amy
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Welcome to the first Friday Finds for 2018! This is the 79th Friday Finds since Piano Pantry kicked off in 2016. Yowsuh – that’s a lot of finds! Here’s the very first one if you’re curious.

I’m using the first one as part of the 12 Days of Inspiration series you may have seen going around the piano blogosphere world.

This is day 11 of the series and thus you’ll find 11 great finds for the new year. Links to days 1 – 10 of the series can be found at the end of the post.

 

1 – Security

It’s important now more than ever to have strong passwords on the internet. A reader recently shared with me a website she uses and really likes for generating passwords by VPN Mentor. Check out this password generator. You can also use a program such as LastPass like I do to generate strong passwords.

 

2 – Games First

Tracy Selle has a really good idea that I’m going to try for awhile – starting lessons with an activity/game rather than ending with one. This would certainly be a good way to shake things up as you start back to lessons.

 

3 – MLT book made FREE

GIA Publications has made available a PDF download of Dr. Edwin E. Gordon’s booklet Quick and Easy Introductions. This is the best book out there for getting your feet wet with Music Learning Theory.

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Friday Finds #78: Christmas Edition

December 1, 2017
by Amy
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As we enter the beginning of December, it’s time to start gathering ideas for holiday activities for group classes and, if you haven’t already, Christmas or Hanukkah music for students.

For some of my favorite holiday books, see Trusty Christmas Favorites: Repertoire I Return to Year After Year.

There’s a heck of a lot of Christmas activities floating around in piano teacher world – believe me, I’ve tried them all!

To help you weed through the noise, finds this week include activities I’ve included in lesson plans in the past and seem to return to plus a few more goodies.

 

1

Christmas rhythm dictation sheets | Pianimation. (They’re harder for students than you may think! Because of that, I don’t do these with my very youngest students. The same goes for the next one.)

 

2

Christmas carol rhythm matchups | Pianimation. My older students usually do well with this one.

 

3

My eyes are on the beautiful Farm Fresh Christmas Trees sign from HarperGrayceSigns.com for our new house (and studio)!

The Kris Kringle Bed and Breakfast sign from signsofhopear.comis also on my radar!

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Friday Finds #77: Thanksgiving Edition

November 17, 2017
by Amy
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Thanksgiving is a cook’s dream, wouldn’t you say? Choosing an array of food to eat at my family’s table is actually fun for me! Some of my favorite meals and music for the holiday season can be found on Amy’s Holiday Favorites.

Since many of us will be planning our lessons and group classes next week around the Thanksgiving theme, I thought I would focus this weeks finds on this American holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

1

The most popular Thanksgiving recipes by state. Indiana? Pumpkin pie.

 

2

Chasing the Turkey board game from Susan Paradis.

 

3

When we lived in Australia, one of my favorite chefs to watch on TV was the Canadian show French Food at Home hosted by Laura Calder. As we’re coming into a season of having our homes full of family, food, and friends, I cannot wait to read and relish in her new book The Inviting Life: An Inspirational Guide to Homemaking, Hosting and Opening the Door to Happiness.

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Christmas Gifts for Music Students: Who Couldn’t Use Another Idea?

November 6, 2017
by Amy
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Do you enjoy giving gifts to your Christmas students? I do!

I know sometimes teachers struggle with whether or not to do gifts. To that, I say, don’t stress over it! If it’s something you enjoy doing, then do it and if it feels more like it’s coming from a place of obligation, make the decision not to do so and be OK with that decision. Most students and families certainly do not expect it.

I like doing it as a gesture to acknowledge both my joy for my students and the season. Along with that, however, comes the difficulty of figuring out something new to do each year. When you have students that are with you for years, giving them the same ornament year after year isn’t very exciting.

This dilemma, if you will, made me procrastinate for several years. After cutting it a little too close a few years ago, I vowed to stop waiting until the last minute. (Year-ahead purchases have even become normal.) Bye-bye stress!

In his post I’ll share several ideas I’ve used over the past years because as this post title states – who couldn’t use another idea?! 🙂

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Trusty Christmas Favorites: Repertoire I Return to Year After Year

October 30, 2017
by Amy
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We all have our favorites. Our favorite Christmas songs, our favorite composers, our favorite arrangements. Each year, when it comes time to pull out the Christmas books for students, while I try new ones each year, it seems I always return to the sturdy few.

Today I will share my favorite Christmas books for students from beginner through late intermediate levels. The repertoire in this post is what I consider good, solid arrangements. While several pieces I’ll highlight are jazzy, I’m not including any books that are specifically labeled with specific styles like “jazzy” or “Romantic Christmas,” etc. (those are for another post another time).

Today is just about good old trusty Christmas music.

After so many years, you begin to see which books seem to appeal most to students and which pieces within those books are the best. So, I’m also going to highlight some of the arrangements I return to again and again.

I always ask my students if they have any requests for Christmas pieces, so hopefully, seeing specific piece names within books will help you as you do your Christmas book shopping.

Faber Supplemental Christmas

I often give my students a Christmas book that is below their current method level, so if they’re playing in Faber 2B, I may choose to give them 2A Christmas. I want them just to be able to have fun playing Christmas music and to be able to play as many pieces as they can.

Level 4 is my favorite, especially because of the jazzy arrangements of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Winder Wonderland that use lots of 7th chords.

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