Prairie Scraps

This week, I had my recital with my piano students.  I wanted to make the night special with some sort of gift and a certificate!  I was going to give each of my students a flower with a certificate, but then I stumbled on an idea two weeks ago, when I ran into a clearance sale at Walgreen's.  I'm actually pretty proud of myself on this one! I got the Superfruit Starbust regular size candy bars for $.30 each!  I grabbed up all of them that Walgreens had!  There 18 and I needed 16, so it was meant to be! (I only ended up needing 11 because 5 students dropped out the last week, but I didn't know that yet!) I also found these Certificate of Excellence certificates at the Dollar Tree in the Teacher section.  They just happened be the same colors of the Starbursts - purple and yellow.  I went as far as picking up purple paper plates and napkins to match and printed my programs out in the yellow paper!  I'm not sure anyone noticed, but it made me happy! Here'

I've recently begin teaching WunderKeys  (go to this site for more information about lessons, to find a teacher near you, or to become a registered teacher) Preschool Piano Lessons to four students.  I love this program and all the games and ideas that are offered for teachers.  The first book has supplemental activities for each lesson as an extra for teachers, but there are just a few ideas for Patterning Games at the beginning of the lesson.  I've been trying to come up with ideas and searching the web, but have not come up with much!   I've also been putting together lesson plans for Summer Music Camp for all of my ages this summer, and ran across quite a few games that use a spinner of some sort.  I found this awesome, magnetic spinner that can be used on whiteboards and have been stalking it on Amazon! It was just a little more than I wanted to pay for the spinners, so I waited!   A few weeks later, I was perusing the aisles of  The Dollar Tree and I found i