Thursday, February 13, 2025 | Yellow Arrows Lessons

Lesson #6

Please watch this week how your students' mastery of Melodic Patterns and Chord Fingerings are going. I am seeing some fingering confusion and habits that will be hard to break the longer they practice them incorrectly. Focus and encourage lots of Red, Blue, and Yellow chord transitions this week, with both right and left hands separately.

Celebrate Connection

A few ideas to bring playfulness to practice time!

• When the notes go up the keyboard, lean to the right; when the notes go down, lean to the left.
• Sing along in pig-latin
• Play (and sing) a song as *Forte* as you can!

I am holding a free preview class next week. I'd love for you to invite your friends to come check out Let's Play Music! I'm also doing free preview classes for Sound Beginnings for those too young for Let's Play Music. (I know a lot of you have younger children!) I LOVE having experienced families attend my preview classes, so please sign up and invite a friend or two! I offer referral bonuses! 

Click here to sign up for a free preview class!

Melodic Patterns
We get to PLAY all of the melodic patterns this week! The value of this daily practice technique is to SEE, SING and PLAY each pattern all at once. Though their well-trained ears might tempt them to play each pattern by ear, insist they look at the book with their goggles, binoculars, laser beam eyes, telescopic vision, x-ray vision, heat vision, freeze vision, or night vision eyes while they play and sing!    
     
Here are the verbal cues we sing in class with our hand signs. Invite them to sing these cues, finger numbers, or be creative and make up different words on the pitches of each melodic pattern.

• MRD - Baby Steps Down 
• SFMRD - Baby Steps Go-Ing Down  
• SMD - Skip-Ping Down  
• SSD - Same Same Leap-up  
• SLTD - Baby Steps Going Up

I have added my Melodic Patterns Matching Game to the student portal. This has all 5 melodic patterns in it. You may use whichever cards you wish (as long as there is a match). Any card that has the same pattern is a match (see example). The simplest way to make this game is to print on thick paper and cut them out. You can laminate them if you wish. Better yet, they fit perfectly on business card paper so you can just print, fold, and tear apart! Be sure you and your child sing ♫ each pattern as you turn the cards over!

Can’t Bug Me
Drumroll please…..Introducing BEAT BUG! “The BEAT is the BUG and the others play a long!” The Beat Bug sets the tempo on the metronome! He might go fast or slow but the beat is a ‘bug’ (quarter note) and the other rhythms (beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, butterflies, slugs) follow and fit within that given tempo. 

Hickory Dickory Dock
This song introduces parallel motion by following a steady beat through a metronome (a tick-tock is what we'll call it in class).    

Lullaby and Goodnight & Go to Sleep
After we solidify the chord transitions in our lullabies, we will make them sound more serene and calming by stylizing them with broken chords. Feel free to invite your child to color the chords in their piano book to make this an easier transition.

Primary Chord Song/Primary Cadence
Time to put on a show for the family! Your child can play ALL chords with BOTH HANDS! Invite them to perform the chords while singing the chords out loud! Play them hands separate, then try hands together with the correct fingerings!

Why the importance of chords in piano playing? Kristi Ison, a Let’s Play Music teacher in Mesa, Arizona, shares the Top 10 Reasons for Learning Primary Chords!

Here is a link to all the skills videos as well as the link to be able to purchase a class video to make up for a missed class. (tap or scan)

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)