Symposium 2012

June 7-9 was our official Let's Play Music convention.  The theme was Time to Teach: how to find more of it, how to make the most of it, and how to enjoy what you have of it!  And also about teaching: how to really connect with your students, how to savor those teaching moments, how to make excellent teaching happen in your studio every week---and it was AMAZING.  Check out the attendees at the Saturday Symposium.
We all left feeling enriched, empowered and excited to start teaching in the Fall!!  Now back to the drawing board to start planning for NEXT year! Ü

Recital 2012

Since I was moving to Anthem at the end of this school year, this recital was a bitter sweet one.  I was so proud to see all my 3rd years graduate from the program, but am sad that all my 2nd year students will finish off the 3rd year with another teacher.

Here are my graduating 2nd years posing at our end of the year party.  

Make that a par-tay!!!!!

Here they are performing their Magical Lamp Puppet Show...






 And here is the 2012 LPM Graduating Class with their medallions after they all performed their compositions.  One of these little Mozarts even won an honorable mention in our National Composition Contest.  Check out the winners here





Yeah, they had fun at our Par-Tay too!
So fun to finish out the year with my niece and my nephew in each of the years.

Symposium 2011

My Let's Play Music duties don't end at summer with our recital. I actually am the Director of Advertising and Events for the Administrative Board for Let's Play Music and June 17th- 18th we had our annual Convention Weekend incorporating our 2nd and 3rd year trainings with our big Symposium. Teachers from ALL over the United States flew in, and carpooled in to join us for a day PACKED with classes, workshops, presentations, motivational speakers, announcements, goodies, give aways, and of COURSE LOTS of prizes. A LOT of blood, sweat, and tears went into the planning and execution of this event, and thankfully I had the amazing members of the Administrative/Advisory Board as well as our LPM Team Leaders to help bring the whole event together. All photos are provided by our event photographer Cherie Mask

The Attendees
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The Administrative Board
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(from l-r Marci Flowers, Melissa Lunt, Julie Fischbeck, Shelle Soelberg, Sanya Fenn, Jenny Smith)
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Random Fun Throughout the Day--including a newborn, AND thats right, our very first male teacher!
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2011 Let's Play Music Recital

This is a combined recital of my 12 1st years and my 15 2nd year Students. Peruse through the program before watching the videos to understand how awesome the skills are that we are showing off!!!

Did I mention that my students are 4-7 years old!!! Truly amazing!

Blue Bugs
Scotland‘s Burning
Many people think that “Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do” was made up for “The Sound of Music”, but solfeggio is actually a method for teaching music that is over 100 years old. By putting syllables with hand signs, young minds can absorb how notes move around on the staff---before note reading is possible.

Primary Chords Song /Chords in PiecesThe primary chords make up about 90% of all the music we listen to. Even though we might not yet be able to read music notation, we can still familiarize, internalize and even feel what the red (I), blue (IV), and yellow (V) chords sound like. Do you know all the pieces of your primary chords?

I am Learning How to SkipThis year the students have learned the basics about the musical staff. We learned to visually recognize the difference between baby steps, skips and leaps. This song reminds us that notes “from a line to the next line” or “from a space to the next space” are skips!

Old PaintOnce we understand how our primary chords work, then we can use them to make music! Old Paint has only one chord – the red chord! By simply playing the red chord in its pieces, it transforms into the accompaniment to one of our favorite songs.

Are You Sleeping?We’ve learned that when you sing (or play) different things at the same time and they sound good together, it’s called harmony! Listen for the harmony between our voices AND our tone bells.

Dinosaur SongOf course once we learned to read them on the staff, we were ready to take that knowledge and play baby steps, skips and even leaps on our bells---which is prepatory to be able to play on keyboards next year.

Can’t Bug MeOne of the most exciting skills we learned this year is how to read and feel rhythm. We used jungle animals to help us learn how to subdivide a beat, and we can read rhythms because of our very musical bugs. Who knew that learning rhythmic notation could be so fun?!

The Magical Lamp--Georges Bizet “Aragonnaise” from Carmen
Puppet shows are our favorite! While we play, we’re listening intelligently to classical music, learning about form, recognizing themes and the moods of themes, and distinguishing various instruments. Can you tell which character is minor in this piece?

Yellow Indians
Music Alphabet
This year, the students have learned all the names of the white keys on the piano! We are well on our way to becoming fine pianists! Listen and you’ll see how smart they’ll get as they sing their music alphabet.

Turtle ShellsAn important skill of reading music is the ability to quickly see the relationship between two notes. This relationship is called an interval, but we like to call our intervals TURTLE SHELLS! Listen to how well we know – and can play – our intervals!

I’m an IndianPlaying rhythms correctly can be difficult. We have learned to do this correctly by first feeling the rhythm through full body involvement. Listen for the very difficult dotted quarter & eighth note rhythm on the keyboards as the singers “shoot their arrows and pull their bows.”

Oh, When the SaintsWhen we put several notes or intervals together, we form a chord. Not only have we learned to sight read, and play the primary chords, we have also learned to play them in different ways to create different styles, sounds and feels such as BLOCK, BROKEN, and even MARCHING—who knew, that our fingers could MARCH!

Practice Every DayThis song involves both hands playing together. We have learned about the grand staff, the treble and bass clefs, and we’ve also learned to recognize Middle C, Middle D and Middle B on the staff. And “if we practice every day, lots of songs we’ll learn to play!”

Don’t Put Your Trash in My BackyardTotal musicianship is much more than just playing the piano. True musicians can hear music in their heads, even several different parts at a time. This song exhibits the children’s developing talent of singing in harmony.

The Pirate Ship--Johannes Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5 Intelligently listening to classical music is both a skill and an art! By guiding the children’s ear to hear the individual themes in the music, and the recurrence of the themes in a balanced form, we are teaching them to love classical music because they understand it.

**Finale – Do, Re, Mi**
This song has it all! Watch as the children from BOTH years sing a major scale up and down, play it on the bells and on the keyboards, use their solfeggio hand signs, and sing harmony—all at the same time!!!







Here is a shot of SOME of  my 2nd years 'mamboing' it up...Photobucket
And two very 'special' students Ü (my niece and my nephew...) Photobucket
Aahhh, i LOVE my job! Ü

Re-Recording of El Gallo

As a member of the Advisory Board for Let's Play Music, I have an opportunity to participate in many facets of the company. It was decided that we needed to update the recording on our Blue Bugs CD of the song 'El Gallo' and my students were called upon to lay down the tracks. They were such good sports...
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Its hard work being a MEGASTAR! Ü