Monster Box

Motivating students to doing something is a big challenge.  Motivating them to accomplish something with purpose and a specific goal in mind is also a challenge.  With this in mind, I have come up with a Monster Box.  The monster box is a way for students to be motivated to accomplish a task with a specific goal in mind that rewards their efforts in a tangible way.  Much like my Incentive Cards, this accomplishes the same goal, but in a different way.

I made my monster box by simply cutting the top off of a Goldfish box.  Then I glued pieces of construction paper around the box.

I got the monsters from an bulletin board set.  Here is some you could print out from Scappin Doodles for $1.00!

You could put anything on the side of the box, as long as you can cut a whole at the mouth.

I bought inexpensive pom poms to feed the monster with.  My kids loved it!  I made each monster a different focus.  So we had the note monster, the rhythm monster, the dynamic monster and the posture monster.  You could come up with whatever focus you wanted to.

Incentive Cards: Princess Version

Incentive cards are a great motivation tool for any activity.  Students love the fun backgrounds and try to fill up their cards with the tokens.  I printed these out front and back on card stock and then laminated them.

I use magnetic chips to fill the circles, but you can use bingo chips, pennies, M&M's, etc..

You can use the incentive card to motivate a student to practice.  They must complete a passage with no errors, or with dynamics, or 5 times to get a chip. 

You can add a fun element and roll a dice to see how many chips you are playing for.  Have fun with the incentive cards. 

Let me know if you have a request for a favorite character and I will try and make one.


Princess Incentive Cards

Incentive Cards

Incentive cards are a great motivation tool for any activity.  Students love the fun backgrounds and try to fill up their cards with the tokens.  I printed these out front and back on card stock and then laminated them.

I use magnetic chips to fill the circles, but you can use bingo chips, pennies, M&M's, etc..

You can use the incentive card to motivate a student to practice.  They must complete a passage with no errors, or with dynamics, or 5 times to get a chip.

You can add a fun element and roll a dice to see how many chips you are playing for.  Have fun with the incentive cards.

Let me know if you have a request for a favorite character and I will try and make one.

Angry Birds
Angry Birds 2
Phineas and Ferb
Phineas and Ferb 2

Changing Cups Challenge UPDATED!

This is a really fun game where students can work on their musical alphabet, intervals and chords.

Changing Cups Challenge is inspired from an idea on Pinterest.

You need some foam coffee cups and sharpe pens.  Take 3 cups and stack them together.  Then write the alphabet around the edge of one of the cups, spacing the letters out evenly.  Write the alphabet on the other two cups so that they line up evenly with the first cup.  The letters should line up and you can spell different chords with by rotating the cups.

Now you can need to make a cup with a flat alphabet and a sharp alphabet, so you can have all the major and minor chords

Other possibilities are making intervals.  Can you name the interval displayed?

Another idea is to build inversions.

For beginner students you can have them stack the cups in alphabetical order.  What comes before the first cup?  What comes after the last cup?  Can you play that note?  Can you play all the notes on the cup?

UPDATE

I also discovered students like stacking the cups, so I created a set to stack.  See the pictures below of a student stacking a skipping alphabet.

Changing Cups Challenge

This is a really fun game where students can work on their musical alphabet, intervals and chords.

Changing Cups Challenge is inspired from an idea on Pinterest.

You need some foam coffee cups and sharpe pens.  Take 3 cups and stack them together.  Then write the alphabet around the edge of one of the cups, spacing the letters out evenly.  Write the alphabet on the other two cups so that they line up evenly with the first cup.  The letters should line up and you can spell different chords with by rotating the cups.

Now you can need to make a cup with a flat alphabet and a sharp alphabet, so you can have all the major and minor chords



Other possibilities are making intervals.  Can you name the interval displayed?




Another idea is to build inversions.

For beginner students you can have them stack the cups in alphabetical order.  What comes before the first cup?  What comes after the last cup?  Can you play that note?  Can you play all the notes on the cup?