Working and Playing Together

At Eaglebrook, students and faculty families already work and play together. I was searching for a way to bring that concept into the classroom. When I found out that I had a piano class comprised of all Sixth Form students this fall term, I knew that I had the perfect opportunity for my piano students to reach out and hold a music class for the Eaglebrook daycare students.

My piano students and I brainstormed ideas for music teaching topics that would be appropriate for the daycare age group. Once we found out that the collaboration project could take place, we took those proposed topics and split them up based on who was interested in teaching each component. Each Sixth Former and I had a meeting to brainstorm the appropriate way to teach the concept to little children, and we traded ideas back and forth until we had a workable lesson plan. I then had our class practice their teaching segment aloud to each other in class, not just once, but several times throughout the term to gain clarity on the timing and flow of ideas.

On Tuesday, November 8th, we welcomed 10 daycare students ranging in age from three to five into our Doubleday group piano lab. Just as we practiced, each Sixth Former (Junbo Yu, Ian O'Connor, Stephen Gu, Juan Carlos Garza, and Adrien Neveu) led an interactive teaching segment focusing on concepts such as soft/loud, high/low, finger numbers, and basic rhythm. The students were able to invite the daycare students up to their individual keyboards after the teaching segments were over and helped them to explore the piano and discover how to play! Eaglebrook students handed out special music pencils to our daycare guests as parting gifts when the class ended. See photos from the class here, and watch a short video here.

We appreciate the daycare students making the trek to Doubleday welcome them back anytime.