This year Christmas camp tied in with our Piano Olympic theme but really stressed one of our events, Creative Composition.

As students arrived to camp they worked on written activities found in their Piano Olympic workbook. I then quickly introduced ClassDojo, a behavioral tool I would be using during camp (I’ll be blogging more about this another time) and then we got started with some fun musical/Christmas themed activities.

We started out with Wendy Stevens fun Christmas Stinky Stockings game. Similar to hot potato, students would pass the stocking to the music and whoever had it when the music stopped would take a card out of the stocking. The cards had theory questions, riddles, singing using an articulation or dynamic, finish a tune challenge, acting, playing (sight-reading) and white elephant (mixing it all up). Be sure to read my review to this game here.

After Christmas Stinky Stockings, we created a Sound Story using MadPad on the iPad to the poem (and song), The Night Before Christmas. This was a precursor in composition for the following week showing how some sounds can create some fun ideas for creativity in compositions. I wish you can view the video clips, but you have to have the MadPad app to see them. So here are some screenshots…

Afterwards students performed Christmas songs for each other. While one student played, the other students guessed what Christmas piece it was and writing it down on a piece of paper. 

After about half the class performed (the rest performed the following week) we took a quick snack break and then ended the class with another game. Find the mistake- Christmas Carols that Jennifer Fink from Pianimation created on her blog. Students were first shown two lines of a Christmas carol. I played but made a mistake on purpose and they needed to tell me where the mistake was by listening. Then the second example shown had written mistakes and they needed to find where they were.

We concluded by watching a video by the Piano Guys- Angels We Have Heard on High. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must check it out…

Week 2 coming soon!

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