Believe it or not, it came to me in a dream. Yes, at 2am in the morning, I hopped out of bed to try the game. (Bit sad really but that's how it is).
So here it is....
The object of the game is for the piano student to identify the notes on the treble and bass stave in a time limit.
Materials:
90 Piece Food Playset - take out all the foods beginning with letters ABCDEFG.
Treble/Bass Flash Cards (ABCDEFG) - 2 sets clearly separated
7 paper plates
Access to kitchen
Access to dining room table
Kitchen Timer
Grocery Bag
How to play:
Set the kitchen timer (I allow 5 minutes)
Place all the foods, cards and paper plates in the grocery bag and give to student. (Tell them they just came home from grocery shopping and they have to prepare the meal etc...)
The game begins when the timer starts.
Step 1: Student hurries to the kitchen and takes out all the food items, flash cards and paper plates.
Step 2: Student puts out each paper plate on the kitchen countertop and places one set of flash cards on each plate. Each plate will have one flash card.
Plate 1: A
Plate 2: B
Plate 3: C
Plate 4: D
Plate 5: E
Plate 6: F
Plate 7: G
Step 3: Student now goes to the dining room table and places the other set of cards on the table. One card for each chair. (7 cards in total)
You could have 7 placemats on the table and student can place one flash card on each placemat.
Step 4: Student hurries back to the kitchen and looks at each individual plate to work out the letter name on the flash card. If it's B, then every food item beginning with B goes on the plate. For example, banana, bread, burger, bun etc... She/he has to repeat the process for each plate.
Step 5: Once this is done, the student takes each plate from the kitchen to the dining room table and serves the correct plate to the correct placemat. Eg, the treble clef B plate in the kitchen must make to to the treble/bass clef B plate on the table.
Step 5: The last plate to go over must be the drinks. I have little miniature cartons of drinks and they can easily fall over on the plate if the student is not careful. If the drinks fall, then they must go back to the kitchen and wait for 5 seconds and then try again.
Students win the game if they can complete the challenge in 5 minutes or less with 100% note accuracy.
So much fun!
Richard Kant.
To make it easier to understand, here is a video of a couple of my students playing the game as a team: