This summer, I found myself excited about creating my first piano camp experience for my youngest group of piano students and am excited to share my experience. At first thought I was unsure of how this would work since it needed to be online, but fortunately, the teaching pathways that I would use became more clear as the start date neared.
I decided the subject of our study would be the lives and works of selected classical composers. I created lapbooks for my prospective “campers” that they would fill out and color as we discussed the composers chosen. I did quickly realize that some of the children were still learning to write, so filling out their lapbooks sometimes took longer than I initially expected. I found that things moved along more briskly when I just played music samples for them as they wrote in their lapbooks.
Piano campers had no trouble getting chatty as I asked for their observations and impressions about the composers and musical clips they listened to together. It ended up being a pleasant surprise for me to just give them a chance to talk about classical music, composers and musicians! As private lesson teachers, we all realize time is precious and moves quickly during the lesson, so this is otherwise not always possible under time constraints during lessons.
Towards the end of the camp experience, I assessed what campers had learned with a game which quizzed them on what they had learned throughout the camp. I didn’t expect that they would enjoy it as much as they did, but quickly made me realize for the future I would want to include more game-style assessments during my camps since they enjoyed it so much.
A week later, it made my day when all of the children, especially the youngest who just turned seven, said in their various ways that they had had fun and it meant so much to me. I am definitely interested in hosting another piano camp next year!
Isabel Marcheselli, NCTM
Camper colors in his lapbook as I present the life and works of Bach on-screen
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