Starlight: Simple to Complex
I just love taking really simple songs that we can use multiple times throughout the journey of students musical education and give them different lea…
Category: Music Teaching
Preparing Pitch: How to prepare pitch and practical ideas
This blog will explore what it means to prepare our students aurally, physically and visually with practical suggestions for activities
High and Low: The widespread metaphor for pitch
I previously discussed what we can do to prepare children to sing and how to help children sing confidently, but we also need to understand…
Empowering children to sing: achieving success with the cornerstone of the Kodály approach
In the last blog post (catch-up here), we talked about the qualities of speaking and singing and what the differences are. To help our students learn…
Preparing to Sing: The Beginnings of Pitch
I wanted the blog after beat and rhythm I wanted to discuss pitch, but the beginnings of pitch aren’t anything to do with so and mi or high and low;…
Preparing Rhythm
To prepare rhythm, we need to go through the same steps we went through with beat but with rhythm!
Steady Beat: Preparing the Foundations for the Building Blocks of Music
Developing Steady Beat is so important. It helps build strong foundations upon which to build the other important elements of music. If our student…
Musical Pictures: inspiring creativity from the first Kodály piano lesson
Musical Pictures is a great improvisation activity in the first Kodály piano lessons to allow the student the opportunity to explore the whole piano …
Teaching Beat and Rhythm Easily
Get physical with this fun, simple song Helen uses in both her Kodály Musicianship and Piano lessons. Your students will FEEL the difference and you …
Sleeping in a Stable – Nativity Song
Here is a Christmas nativity song I wrote called Sleeping In A Stable. It uses the limited solfa toneset of do-mi-so-la. This is ideal for…