ALL ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC WORKSHOP I ORGANIZED AT MY MUSIC SCHOOL
Happy New Year everyone!!
This is the first post of 2023 and I wish all of you another creative and promising music teaching year.
In this post you are about to read about the 4-day Christmas music workshop I organized at my music school during the last week of December.
In Cyprus where I live, we stop piano lessons for two weeks during Christmas holidays so I decided to have morning workshops for the students they wanted to attend (due to an extra amount of fee).
We were a great team of 8 students, myself and my daughter who is 18 years old and she was helping me with the small children. I had three 6-year-old children and the rest of them were 9 and 10 years old.
What was included in the 4-day workshop
The main idea was to teach children music with fun ways and to introduce them to many aspects of music like music theory, piano ensemble, boomwhackers, body percussion, history of music, form and composition but I also added some time every day for unique crafts and drawing while listening to some music.
Our Projects
Jingle Bells
That was an easy and fun ensemble because all the students knew the song and most of them were familiar with the piano notes in different versions each. I gave them the new ensemble arrangement and they learned how to perform it in two days.
I gave some boomwhackers to the small children because it was easier to follow than teaching them the piano version.
Here you can watch a 6 year old student practicing
In the Hall of the Mountain King- Grieg
That was our main piano and boomwhackers ensemble and it was a whole project that I really enjoyed teaching.
In this project children learned:
- About the Norwegian composer Grieg
- Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite
- The story of Peer Gynt
- What is the piece ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ about
- Note-values and the rhythm of the piece
- The term accelerando
- Instruments of the orchestra used in the piece
- To perform the piece in piano and boomwhackers ensemble arrangement
We created a nice video of our performance. You can watch it here:
Radetzky March by J. Strauss
That was a fun piece to create some body percussion patterns. Kids enjoyed it a lot.
What they learned:
- About the Austrian composer Johann Strauss I
- The rhythm of the piece
- How to keep the pulse of the piece
- Body percussion movements
- Instruments of the orchestra while listening and watching Vienna New Year's concert 2019
Educational Music Games and activities
Besides the performing projects that we had during our 4-day workshop we had time for educational fun music games.
We played our favorite Music Finale (which is the music version or the well-known UNO game) and the Music Mall which is the music version of the well-known Monopoly game.
If you live in Cyprus you can purchase them from Partasides &CO Music Store
If you live in Greece you can find them at Fagotto books
For more ideas and inspirations on how to create your own fun music board games read my post Music board games, benefits and a guide
I also created some pdfs with games for my students like Find the instruments but also found some great resources on the internet with rhythm patterns and various other activities for music students.
FREE PUZZLE FOR YOUR STUDENTS IN GREEK AND ENGLISH
You can get for free the hidden words puzzle I 've created for your students by entering your name and email below.
In English:
In Greek:
Crafts and other activities
Crafts was one of my students’ favorite activities. That's because they kept being creative but at the same time they had a break from the rehearsals or our music projects.
We had three different craft-project options to create for every day. Each child chose one project to create for the day. Sometimes when they finished one project they could go to another. We created beautiful Christmas and music creations and they were very pleased.
Drawing and coloring was another activity that kept my students quiet and creative.
We were listening to some Christmas songs while coloring and kids had fun with their creations.
Everyone was happy about this 4-day music workshop and I am sure I will organize this for Christmas '23, too.
You can find the arrangement for the ensemble In the Hall of the Mountain King by clicking here.
You may find more piano or boomwhackers arrangements for your workshops in my e-shop
If you are interested in music workshops you may find the following posts helpful:
Summer fun music workshops part 1
Summer fun music workshops part 2
Boomwhackers workshops for your students
Run a summer music program for your students
For more photos from my 4-day Christmas workshop you can click here
To get the Find the word game I created IN GREEK for your students click below:
Get the hidden words puzzle in English here: