February 3, 2016 by Sara Campbell 0 comments

Valentine’s Day Piano Puzzle Poem

Hearts after lessons on Tuesday… 3 more days to go!

Valentine’s Day is almost here! We’ve been decorating the studio with our “Favorite Song” hearts, and I’ve pulled out some of our Valentine’s Day games and resources. This year I thought I’d make a little poem puzzler to hand out to students next week. I’ll get to that in a minute…

So what’s with the “Favorite Song” hearts? This was just a last minute idea I had to engage with students about the music that they love to listen to and play. All I needed to do was make some construction paper hearts and then asked each student 3 questions:

Pink, purple, or blue? (Blue was very popular. Now it’s just “Pink or Purple?”)
What’s one of your favorite songs to play on the piano right now?
What’s one of your favorite songs that you’ve been listening to?

Since I missed lessons ALL last week (thank you bronchitis, sinus infection, and pink eye… and thank you FLEX WEEKS!), this conversation was a nice and easy way to get back into the swing of things. At the end of the lesson, I gave each student a couple of goals to achieve this week. When they return next week I’ll have stickers and cutouts for them to put on their hearts for each goal that they complete.

Note: With many of my students, I helped them create their own goals. Learning responsibility and autonomy is very important in my studio – I want my students to own their education. This is an especially great tactic for tweens and teens. This doesn’t mean that they’re directing everything in their lessons, but it gives them some of the independence that they crave. It also helps me as a teacher to create achievable goals for students who might be stressed or over-scheduled.

Now… on to my 2016 Valentine’s Day Piano Puzzle Poem! (Try saying that 3 times fast.) Piano puzzle poem, piano puzzle poem, piano puzzle poem! Hooray for alliteration. I’ve had this idea in my head for a few weeks, and I finally found the time this morning to put it together. It’s a fast activity to review concepts like groups of black keys, steps and skips, up and down, and intervals.

Click to Download the PDF

All you need for this activity are some small manipulatives. I’ll be using these adorable Iwako Eraser animals with my students. There are kitties, puppies, dolphins, hedgehogs, lions, tigers, and bears. (Oh my!)

Here are a few other cheap ideas that I found on Amazon:

Valentine’s Day Erasers

Game Board Pawns

Mini Conversation Heart Erasers

You can really use just about anything that’s small enough to fit on the keys: quarters, small candies like Skittles, or game pieces from those “abandoned” board games sitting around at home.

These “Piano Helpers” will be your game piece for the piano puzzler poem. Older students should be able to complete this quick activity on their own, but younger students might need assistance with the directions. After they finish the puzzle, my students will get to take home their “Piano Helper” as a Valentine’s Day gift.

Budget Friendly Printing Idea: Instead of printing out a puzzle for each student, print just one and laminate it, then you can use dry erase markers and reuse it. I do this with almost all of my resources. It’s a great way to save on paper and ink!

Instructions to Download:

To download the FREE 2016 Valentine’s Day Piano Puzzle Poem, just click HERE.

You MUST save the PDF to your computer to ensure that all the images will print out correctly — otherwise some lines or images may not appear.

To Save: Click on the link above, Select the folder you wish to download to, then click “Save.”

To Print: This is a PDF file. Use Adobe Reader or a similar program to open and print.

Terms of Use: By downloading this file, you are agreeing to the terms of use found on SarasMusicStudio.com.

I hope you and your students enjoy this little piano puzzle poem! If you’re looking for more Valentine’s Day resources, check out these assignment sheets and activities I made in years past: