Lesson 11

We learned the Blue Chord this week! Please place Blue Chord Stickers on C-F-A on your piano/keyboard at home. (Refer to HW Booklet p. 70 if you are unsure which notes to put the stickers on.)

It is SOOOOO important that students use fingers 1-3-5 for the Blue Chord (as well as the Red Chord) for the Right Hand. The thumb is an anchor on Middle C and the rest of the hand shifts up a baby step.

Help your child color the chords in Primary Chord Song on p. 16 and Blue Sky on p. 14 to help distinguish the notation of each chord.
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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.

Homework: p. 38–39 Students match the chord shapes to their corresponding keyboard notes.

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 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.
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Echo Edna
Echo Edna gave each child their own 'secret code' (using steps and skips) to ‘decipher’ (sight read) on the magnet board. We used our laser beam eyes to solve the code 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 when notated and on the piano, we are ready to keep our eyes on the book and not look down at our fingers when we play! 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!

For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!