School Program

I teach an Orff/Kodaly style program which includes movement and musical games. For this program which is for 3 year olds and older I bring xylophone, metallophone, drums glockenspiels and many hand held instruments. We begin with the basics of playing and singing while improvising with a 5 tone scale and progress to multi part ensembles with chord changes and rhythmic ostinatos and much more!

Piano Keyboard Sessions for the Entire Class

10 keyboards are used for the upper elementary classes (4th-6th grade) at this Montessori School in Phoenix AZ. We're currently learning to play chords for songs the children like: "A Million Dreams" and "Happy."

I have put the notes of the chords in an order (inversion) that allows the chord progression to be played more easily. These students mostly have no piano experience so we've learned the order of the notes on the keyboard, how to recognize the note C and find the others, play 3 note chords (learning one by one), then reading them off the page while singing the lyrics of the song. I've written pages that are copied for each student with the lyrics of the song with the chord names above the lyrics. There are 33 students in each class (we now have 11 keyboards) and they play 3 children to a keyboard. everyone participates, I record their songs when they're ready and send the MP3 to their parents. This has been fun and a great learning experience.