Have you ever been to a Wine and Paint Night? Prior to the pandemic, a popular Mom’s Night Out was getting together with friends at a local art studio to drink some wine and learn to paint.
If you’ve never been to one, they’re a ton of fun. And while the popularity of these nights probably has a lot to do with the wine, the secret sauce is the fact that participants actually make a piece of art that they can be proud of.
Regardless of age, everyone has an inner child that wants to create something that is good enough to be pinned to a fridge 🙂
Creating is powerful. And that’s why you need to be composing with your piano students.
There is nothing more rewarding to piano students than going home with music that they created!
In today’s post, we are sharing a Halloween Composing Printable that your students can use to compose a spooktacular tune.
We Make Composing With Kids Very, Very Easy
With the printable that we are sharing at the bottom of today’s post, you will have a no-fail composing tool.
Our scaffolded, fill-in-the-blanks approach to composing means you don’t need any prior experience to get your kids creating a Halloween tune.
This ensures that young students will create music that sounds good… no matter what!
If you are not already sold on the idea of composing with kids, let’s dig a little deeper into the benefits:
1. Composing Is A Powerful Practice Tool
With our approach to composing, kids create missing measures for a pre-composed piano piece. As they experiment with composing the missing measures, they will enjoy playing the tune over and over to see if they like their creations.
This means that your primer and level 1 piano students will be performing a leveled tune repeatedly. Where most kids will only practice a piano piece once at home, kids who are composing will have to be pulled away from the piano when it’s bedtime.
2. Composing Is Note Reading Gold
When kids compose their own measures of music, they need to play around on the keys to find a musical melody. When they finally discover something that sounds good, they need to observe the keys they pressed and print the corresponding notes on a music staff.
This process of printing notes on a page actively engages their brain and commits those printed notes to memory. In my experience, kids who love composing are far more capable note readers than their non-composing peers.
3. Composing Trains The Ear
Are your primer piano students unaware when a wrong key is played? This is very common. Little kids often pay more attention to the notes on the page than the keys they are playing.
For this reason, it is important for piano students to engage in lesson activities that force them to actively listen to the music they are making.
And there is no greater activity to achieve this goal than composing. When piano students are experimenting with melodies, they are not worried about notes on a page. Instead, their entire focus in on the piano sounds that they are making.
Through composing, kids are training their ears to listen for music that sounds right and music that sounds wrong.
When these kids return to method book repertoire, they are more likely to correct errors when they play the wrong keys during a piano performance.
Before You Download Today’s Halloween Composing
On Wednesday, we released Mummy Rocks The Costume Contest: Halloween Songs and Activities for Mid-Primer Piano Students.
Our newest resource is leveled for mid-primer piano students, but it is composed so that it can be used with late primer, and even level 1 piano students too.
Like most mid-primer piano books, the music is in middle C position. But, with 6-line piano solos, the music is a little longer than the songs in most primer resources.
By making the pieces just a little more involved, they work well as supplementary repertoire for older students while still being approachable for mid-primer players.
In addition, we took careful attention to have an even distribution of notes between the treble staff and bass staff.
Many middle C position songs in piano method books are treble staff-dominant. For this reason, it is common for students beyond the mid-primer piano level to still struggle with reading F, G, A, and B, on the bass staff.
But with Mummy Rocks The Costume Contest your students will get a ton of practice on the treble staff AND the bass staff.
You can click here or on the cover below to buy it now, or check out a preview in the WunderKeys Bookstore.
Download Today’s Piano Printables
Click here or on the image below to download today’s Halloween Composing Printable. And remember to check your email or visit TeachPianoToday.com on Wednesday to get a copy of Mummy Rocks The Costume Contest for your piano students.
