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Frogs Wearing Flip-Flops

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If you have been following my blog, you know about my new series of short piano teaching pieces that feature letters of the alphabet. Let’s face it, some students need more music than is in their method books. Others in the series include Alligator, Alligator, Baseball Bears, Pat the Cat, The Doughnut Mystery,  E is for Elephant, and G is for Giraffe.

Before you show this to your student, ask if he knows what kind of shoes that start with  F that frogs wear. Mine guessed “flip-flops” right away, maybe because I wear them all the time!

I plan to use this with the right hand thumb on F and then switch around to several fingers. But then I got to thinking that many teachers have perfectly valid reasons to use a 4 or any other finger on F. So I added a small box instead, and guess what, you can add your own fingering!

Then I started thinking why more method books don’t leave fingering out of beginning books and let us add our own. I know a lot of teachers cross out fingering,  but why not a beginning method book that “suggests” fingerings, but leaves it up to the teacher?

If you prefer middle C position and you don’t like the fingering in my music, cross it out and add your own. I also think that most piano teachers outside of North America use middle C position, but I have no firm facts to back that up.

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13 Comments

  1. As always, thank you sooooooo much. This will help with my special needs students….

  2. I love this series and have a student that is a perfect candidate for some extra practice outside of the method books. Thank you for sharing!

  3. Thanks for making these resources freely available. They will be extremely useful for music lessons next school year.
    Cheers

  4. I love the “enter your own fingering” box! I am not in North America but I hate Middle C position. I have had a transfer student for a whole year now and she still can’t break out of it. It’s so limiting!

    1. susanparadis says:

      Some children have a real hard time with that. It really is frustrating for the student and teacher. What are the most popular method books in your area?

      1. Most teachers here use Schaum, Thompson, or Alfred, ALL of which love to get children into fixed hand positions (usually C, G, and F as far as I’m aware). I personally don’t like any of those methods and use Piano Adventures. What do you use?

        1. susanparadis says:

          I’ve been around a long time so I’ve used just about everything! I prefer the ones that are not middle C position, and there are many good ones to choose from over here. I like to try them all!

        1. susanparadis says:

          Thanks for your confidence, but I’m blushing! 🙂 I’m too ADD for a long term project. Oh my goodness, it takes me forever to do anything!

    1. susanparadis says:

      I used Pat the Cat! I might write a C song later if I can come up with some words!

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