GIVEAWAY CONTEST: St. Patrick’s Day Gems
I was a busy little blogger this weekend. For years I’ve been meaning to make some of those pretty glass gem crafts for the studio. You know how it is – it was on that “To-Do” list that just never gets “To-Done.” You think of it every once in a great while, but when you sit down and actually have the time to do things, you never have the materials with which to do them. It was one of those things.
Early Saturday afternoon I found myself at our local Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, and I spotted a bunch of glass gems on a bargain table. It was going to be cold, snowy weekend, and I was itching to do something a bit crafty. In other words: I had the time, AND I had the materials! It was a win-win situation.
Speaking of winning… one lucky commenter is going to win a set of 8 Shamrock Gems. I’m using these as part of my St. Patrick’s Day Rhythm Game. Whenever students have to complete a Coin Challenge card, I try to figure out a way to incorporate these gems. They’re great for building scales and chords on the piano.
To Enter the Contest: Leave a comment about your studio plans for St. Patrick’s Day, or about how excited you are for SPRING to finally get here!
The contest will run until midnight, EST on Friday, March 7th. I will announce the winner on Saturday, March 8th. This should give me enough time to mail out the prize well before St. Patrick’s Day!
Want to get extra entries in the contest? Share this entry on your Facebook Studio Page, Website, Blog, Twitter, or Pinterest account – leave a separate comment with a link to your share! (Make sure that it’s a public post so that I can verify it!)
Good luck, everyone!
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46 Comments
How creative! These are so cute!
Thanks! It was fun to make them.
Well, here in California, spring has been happening since January when very warm weather caused fruit trees to bloom for Groundhog’s Day. Now we are receiving much needed rain and St. Patricks Day in my studio will bring shamrock cookies at the monthly group meeting along with your wonderful St. Patrick’s Day Game. Can’t wait to hear the shrieks and laughter and fun as my 9 year olds play the rhythm game. And what a wonderful surprise for my students, if they have the shamrock gems to play with.
Sounds wonderful 🙂 This makes me want to bake some shortbread shamrock cookies.
I’ve already celebrated St. Patrick’s day with my students. I use all of the St Patrick’s activities that Susan Paradis has on her site, though I’m definitely adding this game as well. (and I love the gems!!!)
Thanks, Rebeccau! We use Susan’s games too – my students love them.
we will be having our first group lesson on st patricks day. and we’ll be playing your new game!
Good luck with your group lesson! I absolutely love doing them. I hope your students enjoy the game! Since it’s a group setting, it might be fun to come up with some silly Coin Challenge tasks 🙂 I hope to test this in a group setting soon.
Great, Fun idea!
Thanks, Jeannie! Glad you like it.
You have such fun ideas! Love them all. I will be having group lesson this month and will play this game, too.
Thank you, Lisa! Please do let me know how the game goes! I’m always looking for pointers or feedback. My students are giving me feedback throughout the week. It’s been fun.
just discovered site and love it. Thanks for sharing as I have no idea how to create on the computer.
Welcome, Lena, and thank you! I’ve always liked to dabble with design. It’s a hobby.
I’m sitting in a hotel room, because our power went out during the recent ice storm – I am definitely counting the days til spring!!!
That’s terrible! I hope you get your power back soon!
I’m eager for spring to get here even though I’m actually not minding this winter (polar vortex in the region where I live now=average winter where I grew up, so it really hasn’t bothered me)…but I AM excited for the school snow days to stop! Get these kids back in lessons!
It’s certainly been a rough year for that!
Spring, oh Spring! Here in Rexburg, Idaho, it’s been hanging around 40 degrees. We feel like this is tanning weather! We could sure use more sun! 🙂 Such a cute idea.
Oh, to be that warm! Soon, I hope. (And ditto on the sun. It’s so dreary right now!)
https://www.facebook.com/lovefamilypiano
Thanks for the share! I started following your FB page 🙂
We will be having group lessons on St. Patty’s day! Perfect to play this game! The gems are so cute! This has been such a strange winter in AZ, it’s been feeling like spring for a while. I just hope this doesn’t mean we are in for a really hot summer.
It’s been a harsh winter here. We are *really* ready for spring!
These gems are great! And what a fun game idea. The week of St Patricks Day should be fun because I always use holidays as an excuse for a new fun holiday themed game. I plan to make this years a bit extra special because it will be my last lesson with my students for several weeks due to maternity leave. I’ll miss my kiddos, but yay for spring and babies!!
Congratulations on your upcoming addition!
Thanks! 🙂
I too will be adding your game to my stockpile of games from Susan Paradis. I especially enjoy the option of having students play scales to advance through the game. This will allow me to include some of my more advanced students who often get left out of the games. Thanks for such a versatile game!
Glad you like it, Robbin! I have a lot of late elementary and early intermediate students, so I needed flexibility with the games. Sounds like a lot of other teachers do too!
Yesterday we played Susan Paradis’ St. Patrick’s game with two of my students. It’s nice because we could play with the same board game and the cards were at two different levels. Last week we did colored “musical” glasses, where I filled six glasses full of water (with coloring of course!)
Ahh!! The water xylophone is one of my favorite activities. Joy Morin came up with a great composing activity – have you seen this before?
http://colorinmypiano.com/downloads/camp-so-you-want-to-be-a-composer/
Pinned on Pinterest! http://www.pinterest.com/beckyboop/piano-studio/
Thanks for the share!
I’d love to win these, but if I don’t, I’d like to know how you made them! I’m sharing this on my studio Facebook page “The Piano Placed.”
Thanks, Jeannie! They’re so simple! You need to find those flattened glass beads (flat on one side, rounded on the other). Then it’s a matter of cutting/gluing the design of your choice. I’ll be featuring another post about these piano gems in the near future. I made about 50 of them last weekend!
“The Piano Place”. Sorry for the typo.
Thanks for the share!
I am having my annual St. Patrick’s Day Extravaganza recital on the 16th for students only. Several students have opted to play an Irish tune or two. Everyone is honorarily Irish for the day. We have a prize for the most outlandish green outfit. Last year two brothers came in full leprechaun regalia.
That sounds like so much fun! I love that idea.
These are so cute …. and offer some fun alternatives for the holiday. Thanks for sharing and the giveaway.
Thanks for reading! Good luck 🙂
Your post gave me the nudge to finally round up some kind of manipulative to help show how to build scales and inversions. As an interim fix, I got some dice out of my game cupboard — even finding two smaller ones to use for the half steps. (nice visual enhancement!) Feeling clever, and wishing the numbers on the dice went to 8 so we could use them to count the tones (the numbers WILL help for discussing the primary chords, but I’m planning to use the green dice I found for that.) I set them out for one of my students. He immediately built a new scale and then exclaimed, “this is so cool, because I can use the dice to show the fingering at the same time! I guess six is going to waste….” Suddenly, figuring out the fingering from “4th on B-flat” is piece of cake. The second big thing I learned was to have him then play the scale an octave up or down from the dice so he could use them as a road map. BIG bonus — he stopped trying to count the first tone as a whole step. I’ve also used this with adult students this week to great success. Slow to see the light, but late is better than never! Thanks.
What a fantastic idea! I love that your student thought about using the dice to show the fingering as well. I might have to make a set of gems with numbers on them for this specific reason. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas 🙂
I start St. Patrick’s Day March 3rd to 17th with all green stickers (frogs, turtles, green smiley faces etc) to reward well-practiced pieces and Susan Paradis clover rhythm worksheets, her games as well as yours depending on the profiency of the student. Love the gems!
Love the green sticker idea!
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