New St. Patrick’s Day items!

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and Susan Paradis Piano Teaching Resources has you covered with tons of fun materials! If you’re like me, the late winter months can feel pretty dreary, and holidays like Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day are a much-needed burst of color and fun. Anything that helps motivate our students and break up the weekly routine is a win, right? Do you feel the same way? I’m here to help you get through this season with ease!

First, I want to let you know that there is just a few days left to join Betty Sue Sticker Club to get this month’s St. Patrick Day design. The cut off will be Wednesday, Feb 26, 2025. After that, I will start designing next month’s stickers. (The early date is to ensure everyone has their stickers in time to actually use them during the coordinating season.) Check out this month’s designs!

I love them so much. The leprechaun was very fun to draw, especially the one where he’s playing piano! I skipped the traditional buckle top hat, and went with a bowler style hat instead. I also look at this season as a turning point for Spring, and so I mixed in some spring season elements as well. I’d love to hear which design is your favorite, comment below!

The Betty Sue Sticker club is a subscription I made available to my customers where you can sign up and and receive one-of-a-kind sticker sheets illustrated and manufactured by me in my home studio. Not only is it fun to receive cute things by snail mail, it also serves a fun motivator for your students.

If this interests you, I’d love for you to sign up! I wrote about it more in this blog post.

Rhythm Lucky Clover is a seasonal hands-on activity that works great for elementary aged students, even if they haven’t learned about fractions yet. It helps students see how the notes relate to each other in terms of their beat value.

I was so excited when I realized that a “Lucky Clover” (four leaf clover) has multiple symmetry lines, which means it could be made into a learning activity similar to Rhythm Pizza. I also originally wanted to use the word “Shamrock” for the title, but upon further research, I learned that a “shamrock” specifically refers to a 3 leaf clover that symbolizes Ireland. That was news to me (despite having a family full of Irish ancestry!).

I also created two fun videos featuring this activity so you can see it in action. One introduces the activity with a fun stop motion demonstration, and the second is a tutorial showing how to mount the printable to foamboard for a sturdier result.

You can see in these video examples that I am using them in two different ways. One I simply printed on regular copy paper, laminated, and cut out with scissors (the stop motion version). The other I take you through my process of mounting it on foam board. Mounting it on foam board provides a much more tactile experience for kids as they do the activity, but it IS more work. I don’t consider myself crafty at all (I know this may shock people, but crafting doesn’t quite do it for me like drawing does!), and I found the foam board mounting to be JUST on the hairy edge of what I’m willing to do crafting-wise. But I have to admit, it creates a great outcome! And hopefully you’d only need to do it once.

Even if you don’t have a laminator, then simply printing on cardstock and cutting out will work great! The beauty of printables with the studio licenses I provide is you only purchase once, and have permission to print as many times as you need.

Over the years, new ideas and products are developed and are rarely taken down from the shop. That means by now, Susan Paradis Piano Teaching Resources has amassed quite the library of seasonal teaching materials. I’d like to highlight a few below.

Another item I’d like to highlight for this season is this original composition by Susan Paradis: Jalopy Jig. While it is not specifically stated as being St. Patrick’s Day theme, if you listen to the sample of the song, you will hear that it certainly has a Irish inspired sound.

You can listen to Jalopy Jig here:

From the description: “Jalopy Jig is a really fun, energetic early intermediate piece that reminds me of how much fun it is to take a drive through the country on a nice spring day, watching the scenery change. There are some potholes in the road and the engine sputters a little. The hands change position frequently, but it is set in five-finger patterns and there are no octave scale patterns. This is a good piece to get your student moving around the keyboard. Fingering, dynamics, and articulations are carefully marked for an artistic performance in festivals and recitals.”

I’d love to hear from you! Do you have any ideas you’d love to see turned into a teaching material? Reach out to me through commenting below — I’d love to help you fill in the gaps in your curriculum!

And I hope you feel well prepared for this next St. Patrick’s Day season!