Harmanny Music Education

Time to show off the fun new things I picked up at the conference! I was very excited to pick up from the next level of Space Place, along with Legato Lake, because I had purchase the Primer level of Space Place and really liked it, and had looked at Legato Lake last year for terms and wanted to get it this year. Then the NoteWordy Phrases is a fun add on to what I'm already doing with my students and NoteWordy!

Then, from .znotes , I was super excited to find these rhythm blocks that are multi sided. A great tool to use with students! And the scale blocks are super awesome! But the magnetic white board was something I was super excited for! Little magnetic dots, and a rhythm add on to help practice rhythm even more!

That doesn't include the digital resources I got from and a digital book specifically for Gen Alpha teens and learning music.

I'm super excited to spend time today going through and unpacking everything and getting them ready to use in lessons this week!

I just spent the last 3 days at the conference. WOW!! It was amazing! I got to take in some great sessions and have lots of conversations. My mind is full of ideas, tips, tools and so much more that will help me in summer lessons, fall and beyond! I'm so grateful to my friend Kay for asking me to help her with her booth. She writes piano resources for younger kids, and has such an awesome and encouraging spirit!

I have lots of ideas and tools to refine what I've already been doing and add to my toolbox for students. I know that they will be a help and an encouragement to parents to encourage and assist with practicing, as well as fun and unique tools to help students learn! I can't wait for next week!!

Coming Monday! A new blog post, based on thoughts that have been swirling around in my head over the last few days. Being at the Texas Music Teachers' Association conference this week and the sessions I've attended and the conversations I've had have spurred a whole lot of thoughts. This will be my first (more than likely not anywhere close to last) attempt to synthesize my thoughts into some ideas. Keep an eye out on the studio blog on the website on Monday!

This morning has already been very insightful for me learning about new things. What topics? Incorporating and educating parents more on practice for students and on how to create fun, unique and immersive performance opportunities! My wheels are starting to spin on both!

What am I doing today? Getting to hang out at my friend Kay’s booth at the Texas Music Teacher’s Conference and talk to people about music! And of course, getting to go to a few sessions and learn things myself too!! It’s been an awesome day so far!

Oh my goodness!! Yesterday was so much fun....and tiring. But in a great way! I started a new elementary voice student and she did great! My trumpet student, Solara T got to start working on Beat It and when she sight read it, she tried to have her mom guess....and mom was stumped. But she figured it out! :-) I started to the two sweetest sisters, both came prepared with homework already done! Since it's Jazzy June, I've given parents a resource to check out Duke Ellington, well, they watched the video, did the quiz and colored the coloring page!! And Caden H. (pictured) started to learn Seven Nation Army on the piano, and in his voice lesson, we did some fun vocal improvisation with these awesome Forest Adventure Cards from Full Voice! I finished the day with my high school voice and piano student Hudson, where we started working on All-State music for voice and a (new to me) Bo Burnham song (also, Bo Burnham is new to me because I'm old). All in all, 9 amazing lessons and lots of fun.

So what's on tap for today? More lessons. 8, in fact, along with a quick jaunt about 30 minutes (depending on Houston traffic) to help my friend Kay set up her booth for the Texas Music Teachers Conference which I'll be attending and helping her with through Saturday! At some point, I'll sleep! At least this week feels like it's a "normal" busy week for me. But the challenge is after 3 weeks of much, much less than "normal", busy is exhausting!! :-)

I'd say that day 1 of summer lessons yesterday was a success! 10 lessons taught, 1 new student started, and a whole lot of fun was had! Miss Cici got to improvise using 5 cards with prompts on them, and she did great! Adult student Olivia started work back on Kacey Musgraves' song "Rainbow" and things came back really well! I'm excited for 10 more lessons today, one new voice student, 2 sisters starting piano and a whole lot more fun!

"Jazz is about being in the moment", a quote from one of my favorite Jazz musicians, Herbie Hancock. What do you think? Is that a good description of Jazz? Or how would you explain it?

Yesterday, Asher R had his first summer lesson. He got to play Flashnote Derby on the iPad and used rhythm dice to work on different rhythms!

The fun of lessons is that I have a dry erase prize wheel to use in lessons. I've got different things like rhythm, game (either iPad or physical music related game), listening, improvising, song, worksheet, Note Speed (a card game designed to strengthen note identification), flash cards (for notes and other music terms), and two other important spots. Those two are student choice and teacher choice. Guess which spot out of all of those students want to land on? Yep. Student choice.

The lesson is structured where students spin the wheel, we'll do that activity for a few minutes, then quickly move on to the next thing. All things that I want to accomplish in a lesson, fun for the students because it's random, and it gets them off the bench and doing things that don't always seem like music....but they are!

I just finished (and yes it was ME and not anyone else in my family) baking cookies for students and parents. I'm hoping that with the lure of goodies (and ice water), parents may be more pulled to come inside and wait during lessons, so they can hear what's going on. It may not be cookies every week (I am capable of baking other things....my mom taught me well), but there will be a fun treat for students, parents and siblings every week this summer!