Thanksgiving

**Updated 11/04/2020 – so many new resources available online and older ones have disappeared so we updated the links at the end of this post! If you have any other free Thanksgiving music lesson resources you love, let us know and we’ll add them in.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner – and in my studio, we are already working on Christmas music. I can’t believe how quickly the fall semester goes every year! We have two weeks of lessons before our fun Thanksgiving group class. Right now I’m pulling out games and gathering new activities for this event. November is one of my favorite months of the year as everyone takes time to be grateful. This year I am so grateful to have a healthy one year old daughter, a wonderful husband and thriving piano students! Truly, I’m living my dream to be a mother/wife and a piano teacher.

With Christmas recitals just around the corner, I sadly never seem to get to Thanksgiving music with my students. So this year, I decided to try something new. I made a simple duet of a favorite Thanksgiving hymn for my students.  The week before Thanksgiving I will be sending this home with elementary students so they can sight ready through both parts. Then at their group class we can read through the duet with everyone taking turns for a bit of ensemble playing time.  This also helps introduce a bit of the holiday mixed in with their regular practicing!

Download here: AllCreaturesDuet-Part 1 and AllCreaturesDuet-Part 2

And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ve gathered together another list of the amazing resources available online for piano teachers. If you have anything to add, please let me know! We had so many people use our Halloween links so we hope this is useful for teachers again.

~ A new resource I’ve loved lately is My Fun Piano Studio. Her Thanksgiving resources include all types of free worksheets – I especially love the composing ones!

~ I always love Jennifer’s worksheets & games at Music Educator Resources. Her free “Thanksgiving Listening Glyph” is a great lesson addition this season as well.

~And can’t forget Susan Paradis with her delightful games and her “Save the Turkey” classic.

Author: Whitney

Whitney Hawker, NCTM, teaches group and private piano at Weber State University, Utah. She loves surprising students with the perfect piece or a new exciting game! After graduate school, she missed sharing ideas and resources daily with colleagues so she and her friend, Spring, began blogging together at 4DPianoTeaching.com