This week we learned the blue chord! At home you can place blue chord stickers on C-F-A. At this point your piano should be very colorful! When playing the blue chord, make sure you emphasize using fingers 1-3-5, the thumb is an anchor on Middle C and the rest of the hand shifts up a baby step. We colored the chords in Primary Chord Song and Blue Sky to help distinguish the notation of each chord. They are getting so good at recognizing the chord notation!
Celebrate Connection
A few ideas to bring playfulness to practice time!
Duet with your parent (and octave higher or lower),
Play your song as *piano* (quiet) as you can.
Balance an object on your head while you play.
Turtle Shells
We will continue to reinforce to your Green Turtle Shell that intervals can show up anywhere on the staff and be played anywhere on the keyboard! Have fun playing an interval game with any two objects by creating an interval on your at home staff board and asking your child what it is and then inviting them to play it on the keyboard. Ideas of objects to use: coins, counters, erasers, cereal, candies, Legos, rocks, etc.
Echo Edna
Each child played on their own with Echo Edna! We used our laser beam eyes to sight read while playing it on the keyboards at the same time!
Now that we are more comfortable with keyboard geography, hand position, how to build chords notated and on the piano, we are ready to keep our eyes on the book and not look down at our fingers while we play each of the songs in the songbook! We’ve already introduced Laser Beam Eyes. Here are some other fun ways to keep our eyes on the book while we practice! Don’t forget parents to follow the notes with your finger and sing along with your child!
(Fill in any of the ideas below with the musical focus of choice. Ideas include: red, blue or yellow chord, specific intervals, different melodic patterns, specific notes, Middle c’s, rat-tat-tats, steps or skips, different bugs (slug, beetle), etc.)
1. Keep your eye on the (rat-tat-tats).
2. (Insert Child’s Name), time to turn on your Laser Beam Eyes while we play Blue Sky!
3. Freeze Ray the Middle C’s with your freeze vision!
4. I’ve got my eye on (the steps in Echo Edna)!
5. I’m watching you Yellow Chords. Always watching, always!
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