We’ve heard over and over that utilizing studio-licensed digital music has revolutionized the way teachers run their studios, saving them lots of time and money. But most teachers agree that printing your digital music library and then organizing it is vital to reaping benefits! The last thing we need in our busy lives is a mess of papers, music we forgot we own, and pieces that students never get to play. With that in mind, today we’ll be talking about how to get organized with music notebook covers.
If you don’t have time to keep reading, here’s what we want you to know first: Our highly-requested music notebook covers and spine inserts for the Little Fuzzies series and Music Achievement Cards have been released. These covers and spine inserts can be printed as many times as you need so that both you AND your students can use them! And now, here are our best tips for creating your organized music library using our music notebook covers.
Why you need organized binders of your digital music
No one wants things to organize. But the problem with digital music is that it’s “out of sight, out of mind” and it’s easy to just forget what you have! So printing out the digital music that you have and putting them in a handy organized notebook helps you in the following ways:
- Helps you keep track of what you own, minimizing unnecessary purchases.
- Gives you music at your fingertips to save time at the lesson.
- Allows students to pick their own music and spot pieces they want to learn in the future – (bonus points to the beautiful music covers that catch their eyes!).
- Makes it easy to thumb through your music binders when considering lesson plans or recital pieces.
- Makes music instantly accessible! – keep reading for a tip on how to restock missing pieces!
- Assures you that you’re getting the greatest benefit from your studio-licensed music!
In short, physical music eliminates the “out of sight, out of mind” problem, while also giving your students beautiful and engaging music to thumb through and pick out for themselves.
How to organize printed music with 3 ring binders
There are other ways to organize music, but printed music in 3-ring binders is our recommendation. If you’ve done this from the start of your digital studio-licensed music collection…you’re a step ahead. But if you haven’t, here are a few tips on how to get started.
Smaller binders are better: Use 1 inch, 1 1/2 inch, or 2 inch binders. Bigger binders feel unwieldy and are more difficult to open and close, especially for kids.
Keep one binder for each category or collection of music: Each level or series gets it own binder, such as early elementary music, holiday music, or Little Fuzzies music, keeping disorganization and overwhelm to a minimum.
Use page protectors: You can even fit an extra set of a piece into page protectors, making replacements even quicker and easier.
Stay organized as you go with sticky notes: When you take a piece out, put a sticky note there and jot down the title of the missing piece. At the end of the week or month, re-print the missing pieces and fill your binder again! Program printing music into your weekly or monthly schedule. It won’t take much time at all.
Teacher tip: Robin likes to put extra sticky notes at the front of her binder, so she can just grab one on the spot, saving time for finding post-it notes and minimizing the chance she’ll forget to label the missing piece!
Use binder inserts with your music notebook covers: The binder inserts are so helpful because you can see exactly what music is in the binder. And you won’t spend as much time trying to pull out just the right binder at a crucial moment. Our new music notebook covers come with 1 inch, 1 1/2 inch, and 2 inch spine inserts as well, so you can see which binder is which at a glance. Binder inserts are the organizational “cherry on top” that makes things even more lovely for you!
Why music notebook covers matter to kids
When students can see ALL the covers at once, they get excited about learning more music! And since it’s studio licensed, you can even print the student their own copy for their binders. They will be so intrigued by all of the covers and fun pictures that they’ll want to collect them all.
What teacher doesn’t want a printed music system that pulls kids in to playing more music?
This is a psychology concept that has been used for decades! Wendy remembers the spending so much time looking at the back covers of the beloved children book series, The Berenstain Bears. All of the cover thumbnails encouraged her to read more and more because she wanted to collect them all! The Little Fuzzies and Music Achievement Cards notebook covers, have the same effect.
If you’re a teacher whose students have become obsessed with collecting all of the pieces in a series because of Music Achievement Cards or notebook covers, let us know in the comments!
I hope by this point you’re a little more motivated to tackle the project of organizing your music binders. We promise the end result will be worth it! As always, we want to know what you think. Have you already created your music binder system? Do your students love it? Let us know!
