Skip to main content

Summer Piano Lessons

Summer piano (or any instrument) lessons are important.  I have a pretty strong opinion on this and spend the month of May urging my piano student parents that they should try to continue their child's lessons over the summer.  Here are my reasons:
  1. Summer is 1/4th of the year!  That's a lot of the year to miss.
  2. Lessons are a huge investment, why lose the momentum?
  3. Students digress, a lot!  Most students will take at least 3 months to return to where they left off in the spring - so now, you've really lost 6 months or 1/2 of the year!
  4. Because of number 3, you don't save money by taking the lessons off.  You will pay for 9 months and only get 6 months of progress.
  5. Often, children that take the summer off, lose their enthusiasm in the fall, and struggle to stay with it.  In my experience, these students don't come back, or they try and get frustrated with their backward movement, and end up quitting in the middle of the semester.
  6. In my studio, students who stay the summer, get first pick in the fall for lessons time slots!
I'm sure there are a lot of other reasons to continue piano lessons in the summer, but these are my top 6!  My summer schedule is much lighter and I try to make it more fun!  We do 3 lessons in June, 3 in July and then a Piano Party in August.  I add a lots of games and a piano lab for the summer.During those 6 lessons, this summer, I'm doing an Ice Cream theme for an incentive this summer.
 
I printed off the Ice Cream Cones and Scoops from the Summer Ice Cream Challenge.  I was pretty excited to find this resource for free!  My plan is to keep it simple - for each piece that my students check off to be "recital ready", they get a scoop of ice cream to add to their cone. 
 
Unlike Layton Music's suggestion to laminate the ice cream cones, I decided that we are only doing this for 6 weeks, and then I can just give each of my students their long ice cream cone to keep.  I plan to write all their pieces on the scoops as the pass, so they have a record of all they learned this summer.
 
I've offered a special prize to the student who gets the most scoops in the 6 weeks of summer lessons!  We have a snow cone stand in town, so I'm going to see if I can get a certificate from them, or an Icee certificate from the local gas station.
 
In addition to the most scoops, I'm ordering this set of Erasers to give out to all my students for participating:
 
 


I will hand out both at my Summer Piano Pop Party - where we will play lots of piano and music games and of course, eat ice cream sundaes! 

That's it!  Nothing more complicated.  Basically, if kids want to compete for the most scoops of ice cream, they will have to have meaningful practice throughout the week to pass their pieces!  I have quite a few students who are very competitive, so they will just thrive on this incentive.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks so much for your comments! I love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

DIY Pig Feeder

  This is our second year of raising pigs for the fair.  We've had some bumps along the way, one of them was our homemade feeder of last year.  I tend to have ideas, and then Mr. Right gets the pleasure of trying to execute my ideas.  Most of the time it works out, but last year, our feeder was a fail.   This year, we need a feeder that can go a long period of time, since our pigs are not on our property where we live.  Our neighbor made a complaint about the smell of the pigs last year to our landlord, so the landlord told us no more pigs. (Keep in mind, there are only 2 pigs on 6 acres and they are only here for 5 months and then go to the 4-H fair and livestock auction) Thankfully, another neighbor graciously allowed us to pen up a corner of her horse pen, to put our pigs in.    This year, I wanted to be sure that Mr. Right did a quality version of the pig feeder that would make it through the entire five months, and hopefully into the next few years!  We agreed on
Post a Comment
Read more

Burlap and Ticking

I found a queen size bed ruffle with  a ticking ruffle on it.  Immediately, I picked it up (for only $1!) at our local thrift store.  I knew that I would combine it with my find of burlap bags.  ( I picked up 200 of them for only $10!  Yes, that's right, they were only $.05 each! I overindulged in them, and could take no less than 200 because of the price.)  One of the problems with my new bags is that they are a little smaller than the printed ones that I have.  I personally like really long table runners because I have a really big table, but I decided to get over my own feelings and make this runner as long as I could (the ruffle really helped, too).  So here is the runner.  I think the ticking and the burlap really look great together.  I know how to make ruffles and have ticking, but for $1 I thought that this really was worth using from a different source! You could have it in the middle of a big table like above, or you could have the ruffle hang down the edge of the
16 comments
Read more

Drop Cloth Couch Re-do

It's my 100th Post!  What a great big reveal I have in store for you today! Three years ago, I found  Miss Mustard Seeds' 6 part How to Make Slipcovers Series  and started with watching the first video.  I ran out to Home Depot and purchased two drop clothes, washed and bleached them to get ready for making the slipcovers for my two couches, and there they sat folded nicely in my craft room!  A year ago, we moved across the country, so I packed those drop clothes up in a box, clearly marked them and put them on the truck.  When we arrived, I put them in front of all my other boxes to do first.  We even moved again over Christmas, and I moved that box again!  Then, I did a pillow re-do,  HERE  that pushed me over the edge.  I just had to tackle those slip covers! Before of the couch and the pillows that began the entire thing!  I  had a Saturday, where the guys were doing guy things and it was me and the girls home, so I watched all 6 videos!  Yes, I did, from start to
14 comments
Read more