Hayley – First Lesson

I had my first lesson with seven sixth grade clarinetists on March 31. I apologize that I am just now blogging about it nearly a month later, but sometimes life gets crazy busy. I will try to catch up on posts and get back on track, as I have now completed four awesome lessons. The idea of having all seven girls at one time for a group lesson was not exactly what I had originally planned for, but it is going well. They are all at somewhat different levels, in terms of their ability. However, all of them are interested in learning and being open to suggestions, which makes this fun.

The first lesson was kind of trial and error, as I did not know where they were at, so had them play a variety of music in order to figure out what we should work on in the future. “Bear Necessities” was a challenge, but something they wanted to play, so we are working on this a bit at every lesson, and I’m encouraging them to practice it at home. Hopefully it will come together by the end of our short six weeks’ time. I have 45 minutes with them each week, which is quite a while for 12-year-olds to stay focused. So, I decided to play a musical game each week during the last 15 minutes, which the girls have really enjoyed. This first week, it was music symbol pictionary. They definitely liked getting the opportunity to draw on the chalk board!

Here are a few pictures!

All the clarinetists playing new music

Teaching fingerings

Giving encouragement on technique Playing musical symbol pictionary

Playing musical symbol pictionary