Sunday, September 4, 2011

Music and Concentration

I've been teaching piano lessons to a young music student for nearly a year (she was 6 when she started and recently turned 7), and learning the names of the notes has been a bit of a struggle for her. I tried several approaches, but none of them seemed to be working until last week when I decided to make a "concentration" game to help her memorize the mnemonic devices that make naming the notes easier. At first I just let her play the game and try to make matches, then I started asking her to tell me what match she needed to look for. She would turn over a card like "All Cows Eat Grass" and have to tell me that she was looking for a card that said, "Bass Clef Spaces" before turning over a second card. She played the game three times the first day and twice at her lesson yesterday, and she finally seems to get "getting it." Here is what the game looks like: