Mini Twister: With Finger Socks! (Miniature Editions)

Product Information

Need to practice but nowhere near the ivory keys? Try this virtual method that you can take with you wherever you have the internet! This virtual keyboard works with any touchscreen tablet or computer and allows for practice (or play) on the go!

A gameboard and dice make this skill-building game seem fun and easy. Little do students know, they will be practicing three different piano skills, keyboard, notes, and rhythms while attempting to fill their gameboard first. Landmark Landmines is my (and my students’) favourite landmark note game. The “exploding” spots on the game board have lead to many fits of giggles at the Colourful Keys Piano Studio. 8. Staff Clothes Peg Match-up Don’t Leaf Me! is a firm favourite with Vibrant Music Teaching members. It’s so handy because, like Symbol Splash above, it can be used with multiple levels of students.

Curriculum

Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes. If Student A completes the challenge or answers the question, Student B places their finger on Green 1. Arch development– In the palms of the hands are arches. These allow us to hold objects in the palm of our hands and are essential to grip strength. Moving the fingers through finger games can target this area, which in turn supports pinch and grip strength. Make it more challenging and have your students make up a sentence about themselves/somebody they know, i.e. replace the respective personal pronoun with a noun/name. Players may not lift their fingers between turns. The player who keeps their fingers down the longest wins.

Board games- You can learn with board games you already own by using the game pieces: spinners, dice, timers, game pieces all offer opportunities to move those hands. Use the game pieces for hand strengthening, precision, and dexterity. Another great idea is to use paper and pencil handwriting games to create letters, numbers, or shapes and offer fine motor and visual motor work. a new generation of finger games Thumb War – 1,2,3,4 I declare a thumb war! This is a great finger activity for building upper extremity strength, and hand strength!

3. Musical Alphabet Blocks

Hand Jive – this hand clapping game was made popular by the movie Grease. Here’s how it goes: Pat your thighs twice. Clap twice. Wave your hands, one over the other, in front of your chest. Then do it with the other hand on top. Bump your fists twice, one on top of the other. Then do it with the other fist on top. Point your right thumb over your right shoulder twice, then your left thumb over your left shoulder twice. Play this songand put it all together to the beat! Pat-pat-clap-clap-hand-hand-bump-bump-thumb-thumb!

I have a lot of games in my studio. All have their merits, but some of them stand out. These are the free piano teaching games that I return to again and again. Hand therapists work with fingers all day long. They use some great exercises to strengthen and rehabilitate the hand. Imagine trying to use these same exercises on a four year old. A player loses if they are unable to reach a color, if their hand stops touching the paper or if their hand falls. We’ll design two version of the game – a low-resource version (half of A4 size paper) and a version that will require more resources rather than just a sheet of paper. These piano teaching games are the ones that save lessons with sleepy or grumpy students. Keep these in your toolkit and you’ll have more fun in all your piano lessons.Prior to even touching a piano key, learning the correct notes is 100% necessary so students can make playing second nature without even thinking about it. These flashcards help them with the rote memorization of both notes and note names. Put letters in the circles and you say the sounds and your child needs to put their fingers onto the correct letter. Place pegs into a pegboard- time the student to see how many they can place in 30 seconds. Try to beat that time. Sign Language – learning sign language or finger spelling is great exercise for the hand muscles. How about a finger spelling bee? This grand staff game from Susan Paradis is fantastic for several reasons. First, because it’s fun, colourful and young piano beginners love it.