Pre-Piano Camp

I've had SO much fun teaching pre-piano camp this week! I'm sorry it's over! This is my second time to teach a camp like this one, and while the last one went pretty well, this one was really great! I was more clued in to what would work and what wouldn't, how to present concepts to the kids, how often we needed to repeat activities, how long the camp session should be, and how to handle discipline issues.

My pre-piano camp was for rising 1st graders. I had 4 campers, including my own child. Four was just the right number for me. My studio is small, I only have one piano and one digital to use, and I begin to get a little flustered with too many children of this age. We met each morning for a week for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I thought the time was perfect.

We covered all of the following concepts: high and low on the piano, loud and soft (no symbols), 2 and 3 black key groups, the musical alphabet, white keys C-D-E, LH and RH, finger numbers, round hand shape, graceful wrist motion, quarter and half notes.

I used Faber's My First Piano Adventures, Robert Pace's Piano Magic, the computer games at Music Learning Community and lots of other activities. (You can read my review of Piano Magic here.) My daughter had some stuffed animals that looked like Bosco and Kitty, the characters in Piano Magic, so I made out a chart that gave each of them a chance to hold the one of them during the week while we listened to the story. On the last day, we presented a little demonstration for the parents.
I love it when a plan comes together!