Yellow Arrows Lesson 6
We didn’t learn anything new today, but we spent a lot of time on the new material we learned last week with parents. PLEASE help them with their practice one-on-one this week so they will enjoy class more next week. Pay particular attention to LH chord fingering, pg. 11-13, 16, and 20. True to our name, Yellow Arrows move quickly, and this is the point kids start falling behind if they don’t have enough support at home.
Celebrate Connections
A few ideas to bring playfulness to practice time!
- When the notes go up the keyboard, lean to the right; when the notes go down, lean to the left.
- Sing along in pig-latin
- Play (and sing) a song as *Forte* as you can!
Melodic Patterns
We get to PLAY all of the melodic patterns this week! The value of this daily practice technique is to SEE, SING and PLAY each pattern all at once. Though their well-trained ears might tempt them to play each pattern by ear, insist they look at the book with their goggles, binoculars, laser beam eyes, telescopic vision, x-ray vision, heat vision, freeze vision, or night vision eyes while they play and sing!
Here are the verbal cues we sing in class with our hand signs. Invite them to sing these cues, finger numbers, or be creative and make up different words on the pitches of each melodic pattern.
MRD-Baby Steps Down
SFMRD-Baby Steps Go-Ing Down
SMD-Skip-Ping Down
SSD- Same Same Leap-up
SLTD-Baby Steps Going Up
Can’t Bug Me
Drumroll please…..Introducing BEAT BUG! “The BEAT is the BUG and the others play a long!” The Beat Bug sets the tempo on the metronome! He might go fast or slow but the beat is a ‘bug’ (quarter note) and the other rhythms (beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, butterflies, slugs) follow and fit within that given tempo.
Lullaby and Goodnight & Go to Sleep
After we solidify the chord transitions in our lullabies, we will make them sound more serene and calming by stylizing them with broken chords. Feel free to invite your child to color the chords in their piano book to make this an easier transition.
Primary Chord Song/Primary Cadence
Time to put on a show for the family! Your child can play ALL chords with BOTH HANDS! Invite them to perform the chords Ray Charles style while singing the chords out loud! Play them hands separate, then try hands together with the correct fingerings!
Why the importance of chords in piano playing? Kristi Ison, a Let’s Play Music teacher in Mesa, Arizona, shares the Top 10 Reasons for Learning Primary Chords!
For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!
