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, b...

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 perusi...

  With the invention of cell phones and texting, and even social media, I knew that we would rarely actually talk to people in person, but I have recently noticed that we don't even respond to people anymore, not even a text!  Is this our fate?    As a direct seller , I make a special effort to really try to personally connect with my customers on Facebook and also by texting them.  I don't just send advertisements, but I try to connect!  I was trying to call them, like a good direct seller, but people weren't answering my calls anymore.  It was then that I realized that people are just not talking on the phone anymore.   I decided about a month ago, to send 3-5 personal messages each day either on Facebook or by text to my friends and customers to try to reconnect.  Here's what I say: "Hi, Jenny!  How's it going?"  That's it!    I would say that less than 5% of people actually respond to this bland q...

As you may have already guessed from my previous article, 5 Reasons to NOT use Standardized Tests in Your Homeschool, I'm not a huge fan of testing my kids at all. It's not that I don't think that tests have a valid place in homeschool, I think in some instances, you should put your child through the process of testing. But I'm here to say that testing, especially Standardized Tests, are not the tell all for your child's knowledge and understanding. Here are 5 Ways to Know that Your Homeschool Works Ask your child questions after presenting the subject.  Can the give you important details about the subject back, in their own words?  Are they able to tell others about what they are studying?  I often "set" my children up.  When we see a friend or family member, I'll ask them to tell them about what we have been studying.  If they're at a loss for words, I'll prompt them.  For example, I'll say: "What war are we studying?" ...

As I mentioned in my prior post Back to the Keyboard, Mr. Right was really excited about the possibility of me offering piano lessons!  Thankfully, I acted on that and got in about six new students to teach each week.  One of the main reasons I've been hesitant to teach lessons, is that it ties up that evening time, where my own kids have sports.  I try so hard to be at my own children's games, that it's hard to be tied to lessons every single week all year round. What surprised me most about putting it out there to my Facebook friends that I was looking for students, was how many wanted their preschool age children in lesson.  My first response was that they need to know how to read.  Well, as I've been researching to get inspiration and see how to run a music studio, I ran across a preschool music program.  I've looked at a different Kindergarten music program before, but had two objections to it.  First, that program involved me teaching a group ...

I've been AWOL lately- we've been having some changes going on with family, so I'm just trying to figure things out!  I hope and pray that this Resurrection Day brings you and your family many blessings!

Recently, I made a casual comment about going back to teaching piano lessons to Mr. Right, and his immediate response was "Yes! Please do!"  I'm going to be honest here, although I have a Bachelor's of Music in Music Therapy, I'm really intimidated by teaching lessons.  Here are my excuses: I'm not the best piano player (I majored on trumpet, and minored on piano) I like the freedom of having my weeks to myself - let's face it, piano lessons have to be done every week on the same days and times. I'm definitely not as good at piano as many of my college classmates. What do I do when I get a student farther than my own skills? It's hard to attend all of my own kids afterschool activities, when I'm tied to lessons every afternoon. So there it is, most of my excuses for not wanting to teach. On the other hand, though, we need the money AND I have degree in this!  It's my talent, why not try? I started by offering lessons to local h...