Music Competency bag

This turned out to be one of my favorites. My six year old just started playing clarinet this year, and has had some trouble remembering the notes as she is learning to read music. This bag is the perfect solution, and lots of fun too.

I covered several competencies in this bag, including learning the names and shapes of notes, recognizing the placement of notes and memorizing clarinet finger positions. You could really make this work with any instrument.

 For these cards, I had my 15 year old son draw out the pictures of a treble clef, bass clef, whole note, half note, quarter note and a rest. I guess I could have just printed these onto card stock from on-line, but he was sitting there and he draws well :) Anyway, the task is simply to trace the shapes of the notes with the pipe cleaners. Easy, and a great way to help her remember them.

Next up in this bag is clarinet finger position flash cards. We wanted to have something that was a visual reminder of what Jamie was trying to replicate in class, so this was a good fit. My sweet hubbie found the finger position chart on line (and believe me, there are TONS of these for EVERY Instrument, so finding these shouldn't be difficult!) He zoomed in until we got the size we like, then we printed them, wrote the correct note name on the back and laminated them. Great review without having to lug that instrument out of it's case each time!

The last part of this competency bag is simply a laminated chart of many different notes with blank lines under them. I threw in a kitchen timer and challenged her to complete each of the lines in less then 15 seconds. I figure it will at least take a few tries to get there!
And there you have it, out music note competency bag. As she gets better and better at reading music and playing the clarinet, there is room for many more notes and symbols along the way!