Splash Cats

Solo Time Music Games is a company making and selling music games that I have recently discovered.  Solo Time sells music games for elementary and early intermediate students covering a wide variety of concepts.  Their motto, “Putting the flash back in flashcards” is aptly chosen as their games are very colorful and attractive to young students.

Lois, one of the creators sent me one of her games to review called Splash Cats.  This game is for beginning students and drills the concepts of white key note names and notes on the treble and bass staff from Bass G to the Treble G space.  Students are given beach ball flashcards with pictures of notes (on the keyboard or staff) and asked to “Throw the ball into the right bucket…Don’t get wet!”  Students then place the flashcard into the correct bucket. 

I had this game sitting out to play with a young student when my son, not a piano student, asked to play it.  You could tell he was just drawn to the cute blue cats on the board as well as the colorful beachballs.  I told him the answers to the flashcards so that he could put them in the appropriate bucket and he had a blast!

Then, I gave it to one of my young students to play and she enjoyed it as well.  It definitely helped reinforce note names and white keys names. 

I also thought that several other games looked extremely interesting on the SoloTime site.  Here are some that I would encourage you to check out:

Burger intervals (differentiating between Major, minor, and perfect intervals on the staff)
Pyramid triads (very creative game for reinforcing the look of root position, 1st inversion, and 2nd inversion triads)
Three’s a Triad (for building triads)

Music for Young Children teachers may be interested to know that each game has a code on it that tell you with which levels of MYC curriculum these games work.  For example, the Splash Cats game has SS1, SS2, SB1, and MB1 on it (and on the website). 

There are many more interesting looking games and I would encourage you to check them out.  Lois is wonderful about responding to any questions I had so I’m sure she would be happy to talk with you about any of the games.