100th Blog Post – Scale Gem Giveaway
Since January 14th, 2014, Adventures of a Piano and Voice Teacher has officially published 100 blog posts.
That’s 100 posts in 244 days.
(or 169 “working” days)
Not too shabby! I hope to continue offering lots of resources, reviews, and information in the future. I’ve got a notebook full of ideas (yes, I’m old school that way) and I’m always looking for new inspiration from fellow bloggers and music teachers.
In celebration of the 100th blog post, I thought we’d do a little giveaway! You might have seen the St. Patrick’s Day Piano Gems, or the little wooden letters that I use on the DIY Foam Keyboard.
Piano Gems are a great way to reinforce all kinds of concepts on the piano – plus you can easily use them for game pieces! These gems were inspired by ColorinMyPiano back in 2010, with her “Musical AlphaGems”. Check out Joy’s blog post for a free downloadable PDF with instructions to make these gems.Â
Last week, I used these gems to help one of my intermediate student learn a new scale. I handed her the gems, and she placed them on the middle of the piano in the correct whole-step and half-step formula. She then played the scale on either side of the piano with both left and right hand, and used the piano gems as a reference point.
Afterwards, she remarked about how “easy it was to see what the scale looks like on the keys.”
One lucky reader will receive a set of 14 Piano Gems – enough to make a full octave scale on any note. Entries will be accepted up through 9am EST on Friday, Sept. 19th! Â
To Enter the Giveaway: Comment below with an idea about how YOU would use Piano Gems during lessons! OR share your favorite activity that involves adding items onto the piano keys. The winner will be announced on the blog on Friday morning! Good luck 🙂 All comments are screened, so please allow time for your comment to appear!
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20 Comments
I would use mine for scales for the older kiddos and learning note names for the little ones! Congrats on post 100!!
I have a Scale Challenge going on in the studio this Fall and the intermediate students are focusing on Harmonic and Melodic minor scales. These will be excellent visual aids to manipulate on the keyboard in learning the more complicated keys. Would love to have the # and b names also. Perhaps I will have to make some.
Just this morning I used Legos to show how to build major and minor triads on any key. Blue on tonic, white, white, white (for notes you don’t play), clear (because that is the note that changes for major/ minor), white, white, and red on the dominant. It was easy to see that blue and red don’t change and only the 3rd white and clear switch places to make a major into a minor.
What a neat idea, Lori!
This would be grand to teach key names and scales. 😀
How creative and fun for scales and note names as well as game pieces! So far I only have the little Japanese erasers but I love that these have the note names right on them!!!
I would use them to show my students scales.
I use gems as tokens to play a keyboard racing game where we race across the keyboard identifying notes from flashcards.
I love these cute gems!! I would use them to help my students understand intervals, scales, and match flashcards with the gem on the piano keys!
I have lots of “littles” so these would be great in reinforcing the names of the keys they are learning currently! I would also use them with older students in staff exercises.
These would be perfect to help the young students visualize the scales that and chords that are being taught each week.
Congratulations on your 100 posts! I would use these gems on the keyboard to build scales and triads, to show intervals and to spell words and then place the letters of the words on the correct keys. You could also do that on the staff. I would use them off the keyboard for students to create the musical alphabet forwards and backwards and to show steps and skips.
Congrats on the 100th! I think the gems would work well in teaching the root and inverted chords, to help students visualize the interval changes from one chord to the next. I think they would work well with primary chord progressions, too.
I just made a staff and keyboard on a white board. I would use them by putting magnets on the back and using them on the white board.
For early elementary students I would use these to help them visualize the skips on the keys and then transfer that concept to teach spaces and lines on the staff (repeated patterns of FACE GBD). For more advanced students it would be a great way to introduce inversions of triads and V7chords, or race to cover the keys while identifying flashcards.
I would use them in many ways, but one that just came to me – I would use them as a manipulative on a large grand staff, testing notes and intervals. Usually I just use the plain colored gems that I have, but having the letters on these would be a nice extra step for visual learners.
Certainly a very useful aid to use with the visual learners for keyboard geography, scales, intervals, various music activities. Many wonderful ideas from all the comments. Best wishes everyone
I would use them for letter names for beginners, scales for elementary and chords (triads) for more advanced. Love them!
I have wanted to make a set of these for a long time but haven’t got to it. I think these would be amazing for finding notes for beginners to building chords and scales.
I would use them to help learn sharps,scales and songs with notes I am not familiar with.
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