Amazon is running its Spring Sale from March 20 – 25, 2024.
I did some leg work for you and compiled all items from my favorites lists that are currently on sale (there were 27!).
Categories include:
Enjoy!
36% OFF
Sending students birthday postcards is something I’ve been doing for years and have posted about several times in the past:
After ten years of mailing postcards, I’ll admit I needed a break last year. (While it’s wonderful to do little “extras” for our students, it’s OK to need a break.) A year off was just the breather I needed, and I’m excited to do it again this year.
Part of my excitement is that one of my favorite digital tools, Canva, now offers printing services. I wanted to try designing my birthday postcards this year using the new studio logo I had redesigned last year.
In this video post, I will show you how to design and order postcards in Canva. At $18 for 25 cards, I thought their prices were very reasonable!
Did you make a pact with yourself to get better organized this summer?
Since I know my teacher friends pretty well, I would bet that this isn’t the first time you’ve made this pact to yourself.
The hard part is… it’s SUMMERTIME! We want to do fun things with family and friends (as it should be)!
I get it. I know you have a strong need to get yourself in order before the school year returns full force, and I’m here to help!
No matter how great our intentions are, we really need someone to be right there with us to walk us step by step.
So, I’m offering a series of eight 75-minute power-hour sessions in July.
By committing yourself to dedicated time with other teachers and working through the digital landscape progressively, you will walk away feeling ready to tackle the new year.
Each session will have a focus area:
I will be there to kick off each theme focus with a few tips and tricks. After that, it will be heads-down and off to work. We’ll finish with a quick check-in at the end and be on our way.
We will meet for eight sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays 11:45 am – 1:00 pm EDT.
If you can’t make this session but want to be notified the next time this series is offered, please join this first notification list.
Thanks to summer, I finally had a chance to sit down and put together a little creative project I’ve had on my mind for a while!
I’m always looking for fresh, uncluttered, and visually appealing images to use on my computer desktop background or wallpaper.
Years ago, one of the food websites I was following offered a new set each year. Unfortunately, she no longer does this and ever since I’ve never really put any effort into finding something new – I just rotate through her old ones along with a few others.
If you’re interested, she has a live set you can still get your hands on. Visit the blog post: Free Backgrounds for Food Enthusiasts from Chocolate and Zucchini.
Back in those days I would have had no idea how to create my own but it occurred to me last year I could easily do so with Canva (which I swear I use almost every day! LOL).
So, I’ve created a set of 12 images featuring 12 of my favorite quotes (one for each month of the year – which is about how often I try to rotate). I tried using a combination of both educational quotes, life quotes, and productivity quotes. I hope you find the choices well-balanced and inspiring.
My goal was to keep it simple and visually appealing. I think the Piano Pantry dark blue color looks amazing as a desktop background and makes for a really sleek and clean feel.
Here is a slideshow preview. Click on the arrows on the bottom left or hoover along the right or left sides to go forward or back.
When coaching teachers on digital organization, it’s always my recommendation to keep your desktop free of shortcuts and to use your taskbar to pin quick links to your most used programs. This allows your screen to be clutter-free and more aesthetically pleasing.
For any links you do keep on the desktop background, try and relegate them to the side as much as possible. As you scroll through the images you will notice I tried to keep the quotes especially free of the left margin which is my preferred location for anything on the desktop.
Sign up here to get the download delivered to your inbox. It will send you a link and when you click on the link, you will receive access to a ZIP file. From there you will want to download the file to your computer and extract the file. Be sure to save it in a location you will remember to access.
*By submitting this form, you acknowledge that you’re signing up for my email list and agree to receive regular communication (generally once a week).
While I think it’s fun to change my desktop background each month, I would never remember if it didn’t place a recurring reminder/task in my calendar. For more tips like this, listen in on episode #006 of The Piano Pantry Podcast – Tasks: They’re Not All Created Equal
Enjoy!
If you would like to see more of these in the future, let me know in the comments!
Teaching areas can be hard places to organize. Not only do we like to keep items close at hand, but if you teach a variety of levels, the number of teaching resources can easily double.
There are games, scale books, sight-reading materials, pedal extenders, dry-erase boards, game markers, technique tools, highlighters, and much more.
The great thing about organization (like many things in life) is that there’s no right or wrong way.
What we DO need in order to make it happen, though, is:
In this post, I want to share a few different ways I have stored my own teaching games and resources over the years, as well as links to loads of other teachers’ ideas.
As you’re considering a system that works well for your space, keep these things in mind:
I hope this post gives you lots of fresh ideas as you freshen up your own teaching space!
For more on that, listen in on episode #19 of The Piano Pantry Podcast – Spring Cleaning: It’s Time.
Recently, I shared a couple of blog posts related to building a lending library in your studio of music-themed children’s books and comics.
After purchasing a few more books from some of your recommendations, I noticed I had quite a few books that had suggested listening lists in the back of the book. Thus was born the idea to create listening playlists to accompany some of these books!
I’ve been using Spotify for years to create playlists of my own. It’s a wonderful place to create public playlists anyone can listen to.
In this post, I will share brief synopses of each of these 9 books as well as the direct link to each playlist.
For quick access to them all in one location, simply click on the link to my public playlists.
As a bonus, as a way of sharing these playlists with your students, I’ve created a free printable of bookmarks you can print on heavy paper or cardstock and stick inside each book when it’s checked out.
This will be an easy way to give parents the link to listen to these playlists at home when reading these books with their children.
Continue reading
(Note: This photo is missing a couple of my recommendations you’ll read about below.)
Thanks to reader Emily Suszko for this post suggestion!
Ever since I opened my studio, I have been building a collection of piano-themed children’s books in my lending library. I’m not sure if I got the idea from someone else or it just seemed the natural thing to do. In any case, a lending library can be a fun and valuable addition to your music studio.
Today I want to share with you 15 of my favorite books thus far so you can begin building your own library! Since it can be an expensive endeavor if you’re not careful, I’ll also share a couple of tips on how to do so without breaking the bank as well as how to track check-outs.
First of all, let’s talk about some of the benefits of keeping a lending library in your music studio.
#1 Reinforcement
Many books will support what we do in the lesson as well as teach valuable life lessons including the joy of creating at the piano, the importance of practice, the joy of music-making, and more.
#2 Added Value
Anything we can do in our music studios to take it to the next level shows potential clients they’re getting added value. It also conveys to families that we care about students in a multitude of ways outside of just their time at the piano.
#3 Ease of Access
Families may not have ever considered looking for books at the library for their children that are music-themed. Having a collection right in your studio makes it easy for them to utilize and enjoy.
Continue readingI recommend many resources and tools here on Piano Pantry to help you be more organized and productive in your personal and studio life. Find a list of those resources here: Recommended Resources.
Two of those are LastPass, my favorite password manager, and Paprika, my favorite recipe app.
Both of them have big sales going on this week.
All four versions of Paprika are on sale from now until the end of November.
Sale prices will vary by country, but the currently displayed prices on their website, the App Store, and the Play Store are indeed the correct prices.
Some of my favorite features of this app are:
iOS and Android apps are currently 40% off:
Paprika 3 for iOS
Paprika 3 for Android
MacOS and Windows apps are currently 50% off:
Get Paprika 3 for macOS
Get Paprika 3 for Windows
Gone are the days of repeating the same password over and over or using the same one but changing one number every month, or, like my dad, writing it down on a half-dozen index cards (oh my!).
Some of my favorite features of the premium version of Last Pass are:
Save and secure personal information in one location.
On November 23-29th, 2021, LastPass is running a 25% off sale for annual plans.
Don’t miss out on this great opportunity!
Signup here.
Are you a member of MTNA (Music Teacher’s National Association)? If so, you may or may not have caught their most recent venture – a quarterly Business Digest!
The growth of MTNA’s business resources has been an important focus and implementation for current president Karen Thickstun.
One of the first projects (that I know of) was developing the Business Resources section of the MTNA website.
After Karen started her MTNA Presidency this past March, she passed the reigns on the new Email Business Digest to Beth Klingenstein.
You all likely know me well enough that piano teacher resources are the name of my game as I’ve been writing the weekly Friday Finds series since the blog started!
Thus, I have joined a team of several other teachers led by Beth to bring you this quarterly digest!
I’m working on two sections: “Resource Gems” (along with fellow teacher Jennifer Walschap), and “Technology Tips and Tools” (along with fellow teacher Jennifer Stadler)
I hope you will find these resources to be invaluable for running your own independent music studio!
If you’re not a member of MTNA, consider joining today!
If you subscribe to and use My Music Staff for your music studio, they have a feature in the calendar that, with one click, will add your studio calendar from My Music Staff to your personal cloud calendar (such as Google or iCloud).
I have found this especially useful when tracking my student’s birthdays since I send students cards in the mail.
I don’t utilize the MMS calendar for my studio schedule, so all that shows up there is the student’s birthdays. You may still like this feature, even if you have your entire studio schedule!
My Music Staff has a help article available to show you how to set this up, but I thought it might be helpful to highlight the feature here and include some screenshots for an easy visual. (Click on the image to enlarge if needed.)
Remember that I use Google Calendar, so yours may feel slightly different.
1) Navigate to the Calendar from the sidebar in My Music Staff, then clear to the right, click on the purple “Set up Sync” button.
2) Select which calendar you use.
3) It will automatically open your calendar with the proper link. Click “Add”
4) In Google Calendar, it will show up under “Other calendars.” Click on the three dots on the right to rename the calendar or change the calendar color.
It may take 24 hours for them to sync, but they will show up!
Here, I’ve toggled all my other calendars off just to show the student birthdays.
If you would like to read more about doing student birthday cards/postcards, check out these posts:
Marketing with Postcards (it’s not what you think!)
Fun Postcards for Student Birthdays
Unique Student Birthday Cards on Etsy
Student Birthday Cards with a Surprise Twist
Do you have something you do in your studio every year for birthdays?
I would love to hear your ideas – please share in the comments!
