11 Kids games at the piano – no resources needed!
I teach one to one beginner piano lessons and full class music lessons to a big number of young kids as my 9 to 5 is teaching within schools for a local music service. Whether they learn to play piano or another musical instrument and whether they learn in school, with a private piano tutor, with a parent or from a video course or app, I believe games should be a big part of their learning. But being a visitor in schools and not working within my own studio space means I can’t carry an endless supply of resources around with me for this purpose. I’m sure there are lots of music teachers in the same position, and many piano parents who might also appreciate this list of games and ideas which require nothing but the piano/keyboard and in some cases not even that. They’ll be lots of musical fun and embed knowledge really effectively.
Piano teachers will find they are great at the start of a lesson, or to fill a bit of time at the end, and also really effective as a ‘brain break’ (whilst secretly still providing really worthwhile teaching to your young learners) at any point in the middle of a longer lesson, just to change pace etc. If you teach online piano lessons some games may need adapting slightly but you’ll be able to work them in in some ways. Some of them actually work better if you teach piano online however (like number 4)
Parents of piano learners will find these are a great way to get involved with your son or daughter’s practice time at home and they can help motivate kids to sit down at the piano if they are reluctant to practice sometimes. To do them you need to know where to find the notes on the keyboard, but other than that, you don’t need to be a musician yourself to do these ones.
1. Copy my rhythm – clapping. One of the first games I introduce in music lessons with kids from age 4 to 11. Simply clap a one-bar rhythm and the learner claps it back. Simple rhythms for younger ones of course. You can use different metres later on.
2. Copy my rhythm – on the piano. A fun extension of the above – the pupil copies the rhythm on the instrument using one note or hopefully becoming creative and using a few.
3. Copy my phrase (seen) – I play a simple phrase of a few notes, pupils copies it an octave higher or lower at my request. This is mainly just to get them recognising the notes on the keyboard and to get them focussing and concentrating.
4. Copy my phrase (unseen) – Like the above but I only tell the pupil the starting note and don’t let them see me play the rest (sometimes I do this by using a little keyboard app on my tablet computer, or I just ask them to turn around) – this is an aural training game of course. I keep it super simple at first – just three ascending notes then three descending notes, then maybe a couple of repeated notes before moving up or down and introducing any jumps in the melody.
5. Play my moves – We assign three pitches (three notes) to three different ‘moves’ – often sitting on the floor, crouching and standing up straight. So if we are using C, D and E then C is sitting on the floor, D is crouching, E is standing up straight. The I move and the learner plays my moves. They always want to do it the other way around too – they do the moves and teacher or parent plays. If you’re not feeling wholly energetic then use hand signals instead – this can link with solfa really well but that’s another can of worms I’ll go into at another time.
6. Octave chase – Teacher an pupil have to play notes an octave apart – so if I play a C the learner plays the C an octave higher, if I play and E they play the E an octave higher. We move quickly so they have to concentrate well. They should also name the note we are using each time we move.
7. Fifths chase/ Sixths chase/ Thirds chase etc. – as above but using a different interval once they understand these. Parents if you aren’t sure about intervals, just remember that you count the note you are starting on as well as the note you finish on, so C to E is a third, C to F is a fourth, C to G is a fifth etc.
8. Musical words – the musical alphabet is limited to A to G but this still gives us quite a lot of words we can create and ‘spell out on the piano/keyboard.’ I simply ask my learners to play the notes that spell out ‘deed’ or ‘bag’ or ‘egg’ to do a little reinforcing where to find the notes at the start of our lessons quite often.
9. Musical words 2 – find the word within the notation of your piece – once learners are reading music I ask them to find a word, let’s take ‘beg’ for example within their notation by simply pointing to a notated B, E and G.
10. I went to market – just like the I went to market game but with musical notes to remember instead of groceries – the child chooses a note, adult copies it and adds another, child copies those two and adds another, adult copies those three and adds another – keep going until the pattern is too long to remember. This reinforces finding/naming the piano keys and concentration again.
11. Tick Tock – If the adult says ‘tick’ the learner claps/taps/plays on the piano with a steady beat – each being about a second in duration (imagine they are crotchets if you do know how to read music notation), if the adult says ‘tick tock’ then the learner plays shorter notes – two fitting into the space of what was previously one (ie. Quavers), swap back and to between tick and tick tock. It can also be done just with clapping or body percussion or marching.
Thanks for reading. I hope some of these might be of use to teachers and parents and bring lots of fun. If you have some more no-resource-games you use in lessons or at home with your little learners please share them with me. I’m always keen to try new ones to keep lessons fresh.