Organizing Printable Games

A recent forum post asking how teachers organize their printable games gave me the idea for this topic.

Thanks to so many wonderful teachers sharing games that they have made, it does start to get overwhelming in what to do with them all.  When I first started organizing all my printable games I put them in plastic sleeves and then in a 3 ring binder.  While it worked okay, the problem is the binder became very full fast.  So what I am doing now and it has worked well for me so far is I put my printable games in a sheet protector and then filed in an accordian folder.  The folders are divided by musical topic.  Example: rhythm, notes on staff, notes off staff, chords, etc…

Here are a few pictures to see what I have done.

Tell me, how do you organize your printable games?

 

Holiday Greetings…

 

Twas’ the Night before Christmas

And all through the web

Messages of good tidings

Soon to be read…

 

Wishing you a Magical Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

  

Sound Story Video’s

After a couple sessions of Christmas camp, it occurred to me that it would be fun to film these sound stories.   

This one is Wendy Stevens idea from www.ComposeCreate.com to have students compose short motifs to the story, The Gingerbread Boy.  I found the story online and printed it out.  Then I broke up the narration and gave each student a slip of paper that had a character (or two) that they were to create a motif for.  I gave them about 5-10 min. to get some ideas.  They didn’t write anything down, I didn’t want to make it more complicated then it needed to be.  I told them make it easy enough that they can remember when it’s their turn.  And if they don’t remember, just make it up, it’s all good!  Here is a link if you would like to view  The Gingerbread Boy… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9-DerYpzrA

This next sound story is “St. Nicholas Leaves a Gift” (from the book, Sound Stories published by Hal Leonard) which is a sound story using different instruments.   Here is the video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP1mzCZNbC8

Enjoy!

I SPY

One of the activities that we did at Christmas camp was I SPY.  I gave each student a piece of christmas music (everyone had the same piece).  It didn’t matter if they could play it (I had students in a variety of different levels).  I chose a piece that had a lot of articulations, dynamic markings, etc…  The more the better.  (The piece I used was the first page of “A Christmas Fantasy” in the “In Recital Christmas Favorites Book 6- FJH)

Then just like I Spy, I would say I Spy… a stacatto, ritardando, crecendo, clef change, key signature change, etc…  Then the students would look at their music and when they found one they would raise their hand and call out the measure it was in.  Often times there was more of one of something I was calling so I would take 3 different answers.

It was a very easy and fun actitivity and a great way for students to practice looking out for all that is written in the music.

Remember if you haven’t taken a field trip over to my studio blog, be sure to go there for some other Christmas camp/group lesson ideas…  http://foxxpianostudio.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-camp-2010-making-magical.html

Christmas Camp- Field Trip

We’re going on a Field Trip! To my studio blog that is…  I figured it would be easier to refer you to my studio blog for some pictures and activities we did at Christmas Camp this year.

All aboard!!!  FIELD TRIP (Look for Christmas Camp 2010 if it’s not the top post)

I will be posting some more activities we did that weren’t mentioned on my studio blog.  If you have any questions about any of the activities that were done, please let me know.

The Gingerbread Boy activity idea came from Wendy Stevens blog post at ComposeCreate.com.  And the Christmas Ornament bingo came from SusanParadis.com

Enjoy!  I’m hoping to post some video’s soon if they aren’t too big to upload.

Scrambled Christmas Rhythms

I just finished my first session of “Making Magical Music over the Holidays” Christmas camp this week.  One of the first activities that my students seemed to really enjoy was Scrambled Christmas Rhythms.  We first talked how even though the notes might be correct when playing a piece, if the rhythm is wrong it is not the same piece and may not even be recognizable.

You can download the scrambled Christmas rhythms to play with your students.  This can easily be done in both a group or private lesson format.  Since I did this in a group camp setting, I would play the scrambled rhythm a couple times (sometimes 3) and had the students write their answers on a piece of paper and then at the end we went through all them.  Then I would play the wrong rhythm first and then the correct rhythm.  For the more tricky one’s, once they heard the correct rhythm they knew exactly what Christmas song it was.

Scrambled Christmas Rhythms

Scrambled Rhythms 2

Scrambled Christmas Rhythm Answers