September Update: Castles, Princesses, and other Epic events

 My first month of teaching this school is over. 😭

   September was a blast!

In-Person

   There's something thrilling about the medieval era. A child doesn't have to know what "medieval" means to be mesmerized by the whole knights-and-princesses thing. And it's not just children. *sheepish grin.* I'm not the only grown-up out there with this penchant, am I? 

   So I figured a castle theme would be a pretty intriguing way to kick off the new school year. Welcome, one and all... to the castle. 

My teenage siblings were a real help in pulling this off. Most of that Playmobil up there belongs to my brothers, with one of the two princesses being my sister's. 

They also loaned me a cape of theirs, and a perusal of online castle classroom ideas 'sparked' the construction-paper torches. I was going to make a banner, too, and cardboard towers, but I ran out of time. :( 

Of course, the castle theme demanded some castle games. There was the Mystery of the Royal Scepter, a musical scavenger hunt intended to sneak in a review during Week 1. 


Each flashcard had a clue on the back about which flashcard to pick up next.
Follow the flashcards in the right order, and presto! The Royal Scepter has been found! 
The scepter was also a useful tool in helping my preschool student review her finger "names." 
   Week 2 featured Dragon Sight Reading. Beginner students used flaming finger numbers ...
   ...while third-year buddy students received a Bastien piece to sight read, "The Dragon's Lair" (Piano Level 1) cut up so they could scramble up the measures for each other. 

The Playmobil princesses came in handy for an ear-training game -- forward for every right answer, backwards if they got it wrong! First princess to the yellow circle wins! 
Plastic dollar-store rings were used two ways. In one problem-solving activity, students would have to put on two to five rings (how many was up to them), and then figure out two rhythms that fit the same number of notes and/or rests into one measure of 4/4 time. The second activity was supposed to be a note-reading activity. It turned into improv, which became very fun. 


Note names were tied to the rings, which I then put into a cup.

From there, the student pulled four rings out of the cup, arranged them on the bench, and then proceeded to play the four notes he'd selected. This fellow soon found out what he could create by rearranging the rings each time around. :) 

Online 
   Sadly, the epic theme did not carry over into online lessons -- mostly because the hands-on manipulatives I used in-person just don't translate well virtually. Still, I feel like online lessons are going well. It's true -- they too can be fun. 

   Even though I couldn't carry the castle theme over, I was able to still use some of my activities. For instance, I stuck all the green circles used in the Princess Ear Training onto the scanner, turning them into a gameboard. My online students' mom printed it off, and with a button as a game piece, we were off! 

   For sight reading, Screen Share worked really well. In fact, I've been using it quite a lot. Here I took pictures of individual measures of the song to be sight-read, and pulled them up on the screen in random order. 

WunderKeys sight-reading games also translate well to Google Drive, using Lumin to draw the paths on-screen. 

   But the best game so far I've been doing isn't easy to take pictures of. Maybe at some point I'll have a video to show you, but it works something like this: 
Me: Play me F.
[Student plays F.]
Student: Can you play me C?
[I play C.]

   This back-and-forth is great! It's so much fun for them, it reinforces communication skills, and it implements a review with no extra tools needed! 

   Overall, I'm much more optimistic about online teaching now than I was in May. Not only can it work, it does work. (I've still got openings! Click here if you live in Canada and are interested.) 

What's up in October?

   *laughs* October won't be nearly as epic as September. All these castle-themed activities have left little time for the theory books, so we'll spend some time catching up on those this month! 

   I do plan on using some Thanksgiving-themed worksheets I found next week, one of which is an improv. 

   Until next time ... happy Thanksgiving, and don't forget to give thanks to the One Who makes living possible! 




Location: Onoway, AB T0E 1V0, Canada

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