Do you like to do many games or activities to teach the music alphabet? This blog post will be sharing resources and ideas for teaching the music alphabet and the letters on the keys of the piano so that your youngest students will be able to learn in a fun way!
Games
You can use pebbles or animal erasers to help the students identify the keys on the piano. I have found clear pebbles from the Dollar Store and animal erasers from Target, Amazon, or Walmart. With these tools you will randomly name a letter from A-G and have the student use an eraser or pebble to place it on the keys of the piano. If you want to go a step further, there are dry erase foam dice at the Dollar Store for randomly picking letters.
Movement
You can create your own game to teach the music alphabet through movement. Start by cutting four pieces of paper in half. Write each letter of the music alphabet onto a piece of paper so that you have the first seven pieces of paper in letters A-G (the eighth piece of paper can be thrown away). When playing the game, place the cards on the floor in alphabetical order and with space about a foot apart. Tell your student to step next to the cards while saying the music alphabet. Then have them try at a faster speed and then backwards!
Black Keys
Make sure that your student can identify the groups of two and three black keys before they start learning the keys on the piano. The student should be able to understand the patterns of two and three first. I would suggest looking into Black Key Bingo which is free to anyone who joins as a member here.
Improvisation
Improvisation is a fun way for young beginners to be able to explore the piano and learn to play duets at an early stage. You can have your students improvise on all C's or D's or any other key. If you are looking for resources for teacher duet parts for improvisation, look into the Alphabet Party book in the next section.
Alphabet Party
Alphabet Party has practice pieces, improvisation, and worksheets that have been designed for the first few months of lessons as supplemental practice with their current method book. All of them have been designed for the student to learn the notes on the keys through repetition and duets. Below is a piece from the book called Bedtime designed for young students to learn how to create a steady beat. Click here to learn more about Alphabet Party.