Woo-Hoo! We had a great Spring recital! This past semester, my studio studied the music of Mozart. We did a practice incentive program where the students could earn points towards a statue of Mozart. I'm proud to announce that each and every student earned enough points to qualify for the award!

Here is a picture of one of my students warming up before the recital. The piano in the Farmington Arts Center was very loud and bright, especially for an upright!

These are the Mozart statues that the students all earned. We passed them out at the end of each of the recitals. (I have two in order to accomodate schedules, and to keep them slightly shorter in length)

Every student played a piece by Mozart, the composer we studied this semester.

Here was a little 'favor' I gave everyone at the end. The Arts Center required a lot of clean up if I served refreshments afterward, so I decided to make something they could just take home. It reads, 'Your music was such a delight, played on keys of Black & White.' I filled little cellophane bags with white and black sixlets. It was a fun and easy alternative to refreshments!

St. Patrick's Day Group Piano Lesson

Here's a picture of some St. Patrick's Day pencils that I handed out to each student. I thought it would be fun to teach leading the music and have these as their batons. We lead the music to 'Irish Washerwoman' and everyone caught on quickly!

The first game we played was a rhythm game that I downloaded from www.susanparadis.com. I thought it would be fun to do it with magnets (who doesn't like magnets, right?) and then the students all took turns figuring out the rhythm patterns. I then had them take a cazoo and sound out the rhythm puzzle that they had solved.

Here's the next game we played. I actually made two of these magnetic staves, and then I had the students do a relay on building chords with 3 magnets each. I had them pick a chord out of a bag and they raced to see who could finish it first.

Another worksheet that I had the students fill out was this one, Shamrock Notes, from www.susanparadis.com. She has some great ideas that are already put together so it saves prep time! The students had to fill out all of the notes on the Grand Staff.

Here's a little game that I made up. I wanted it to go along with the theme (St. Patrick's Day) so I made it green of course! I even used little coins as part of the game. Here's how it goes: You take a dice and roll a color. Which ever color you land on, you draw a card for that particular color (in this case, there is yellow, pink, and blue) and put a marker on it--I used a diamond for fun! Then you have to answer the question on the card. If you get it right, you get a coin! The object of the game is to get the diamond to the pot of gold at the end. Each student took at least one turn in this game. You might want to add spaces to make it longer! If the student answered the question right, they also got to pick a coin.

This is an example of the cards that were used in the game. You can use whatever you want. For example, we studied Mozart at the group lesson, and so I included questions about what we had studied about that composer.

Ok, we're now learning about Mozart! This semester we are studying this composer as well as learning a piece by him. Each student is participating in this, and will be performing a piece by Mozart in the Spring recital in May! I made up a little fill-in-the-blank worksheet to help the students learn specific facts about Mozart.

Here's a picture of the gold trophies that the students earned this semester

Well here's my music blog!

Hi! So here's my official Hansen Music Studio blog...I decided it was about time to have some fun and post my musical 'happenings' for all to see!

First of all, I wanted to highlight what my students recently accomplished last semester. I came up with a practice incentive program called, 'Go For the Gold.' The idea was that the students would earn points each week as they practiced, passed off their goals, and turned in their practice sheets (signed by their parent and all!), participated in group performance classes, etc. They could even earn extra points depending on their quality of their lesson! Once they earned a certain number of points, they qualified to earn either a medal, silver trophy, or gold trophy.
Well, I'm happy to report that each and every one of the students earned a beautiful gold trophy, which was given out at an award ceremony at the end of the Winter Recital in December. I hope that the students keep up their hard work that they displayed this past semester!

Another exciting thing I have coming up is that I'll be teaching a 'Mommy & Me' music class! I'm nearing the end of the planning process, but I have high hopes to have everything ready to go by February. I thought this would be a fun way to introduce toddler-age children to music, too!

More updates to come soon......
~Amy~