Thursday, October 29, 2009

Group Lessons- Piano Olympics (Opening Ceremony)

Piano Olympics is officially here! Our theme for this year is Piano Olympics. I hold Piano Olympics in my studio every four years. Students gathered for our "Opening Ceremony" over the last couple days and learned what they will be doing for Piano Olympics this year. They each received a workbook that lists the events they can choose, has an Arizona Torch run map so they can visually see how close they are go getting to each medal level and activities they will be doing periodically.

At our group lesson we did a couple activities in the workbook first. The students learned about Olympic symbol- the color and meaning of the 5 olympic rings. They were then given the chance to create their own Olympic symbol keeping Piano Olympics and music in mind. After that, each student came up and wrote down their own Olympic oath.







After we completed a couple activities in their Piano Olympic workbook, we played a couple music Olympic games. Rhythmic Badminton was by far the highlight! To play Rhythmic Badminton students had to hit a ballooon with a fly swatter back and forth to their opponent. Now that in itself sounds easy, but when you add that they need to do this on the 1st beat of each measure when the music is playing makes this task so much harder. So while I played (and sometimes had the piano play for me so I can take some pics) students had to count carefully to make sure they didn't hit the balloon on the wrong beat.







LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

3 comments:

Leila Viss said...

Hello--I will be holding a piano olympics camp this summer and loved your posted ideas--do you have any other favorite activities? I believe you too are on Michelle Sisler's advisory board and she has mentioned how creative you are in your teaching--thank you for any tips!

Jennifer Foxx said...

Hi Chuck! Thanks for your comment. I am on Michelle's advisory board. :) I would love to help you with more ideas. If you can email me: jennifer@foxxpianostudio.com directly, I'll try to respond in the next couple weeks if that works for you. Right now I'm pretty swamped, way too many things going on at once... that time of year.

Anonymous said...

I am planning a Piano Olympics camp for this summer and would love to hear more ideas if you can share. My email address is jennaherrig@yahoo.com

Thank you so much!!