Large Grand Staff composing with young children

Staff Paper Bundle in the store.

I received a lot of requests for a  large size staff  that you can use as a grand staff and today I am finally getting around to posting it. I think it is rather hard to find staff paper this size, so be sure and take advantage of this if you think you can use it. It will save you some time either drawing it by hand or making your own in Word, not that it’s very difficult.  But if you are like I used to be with several children, a spouse, volunteer activities in school and church, as well as a piano studio, you need all the time you can save! Now that my children are all grown up and on their own I have a lot more free time.

This is a good size of staff paper to use for beginning composing activities.  Notating for children is difficult. It is like learning to write a new language and some of them are so young they are still learning to write words. You can draw the hard things for them, like the treble or bass clef. I teach that all notes start off as little “candy eggs” and you can either chocolate fill them or let them stay vanilla. The stem is the handle. Then I tell them to make sure the handle doesn’t come out of the top of their head! I also sing/chant “up on the right side, down on the left side” as we work.