About five years ago, I had the privilege of attending a session by Diane Hidy called “Diane Hidy’s Practical Piano Teaching Tips.” Diane and I were already friends, so I knew it was going to be good, but the practicality of the session blew me away. As I’ve said many times before, Diane has a profound understanding of both piano pedagogy and child psychology such that she is able to take challenging teaching dilemmas and make them easy for teachers to teach and students to understand.
One of the wonderful things I’ve seen her explain is how to achieve a wonderful hand position in children. So, I invited Diane to explain how she does this and how to adapt this for online teaching. So here’s an article directly from Diane:
Teaching Hand Position Online with Ladybugs and Giraffes
Teaching a student to maintain a beautiful, healthy hand position is one of the most important and most tedious parts of teaching piano. With the additional challenges of teaching online, it can feel like it’s almost impossible.
It isn’t! But it certainly helps to have a few tricks up your sleeve!
1. Give your student a Ladybug.
A Ladybug gives your student an opportunity to experience what a supported, strong hand feels like. When it’s not possible to show a student in person, a Ladybug becomes an indispensable aid in helping the student feel a correct hand position from the inside out. When a student’s hand collapses, ask them to put the Ladybug under their hand for a moment to remind them what their hand should feel like. It gives them a break, and helps them self-correct. In online teaching, all correction must be self-correction, so having a physical prop to do what you might have been able to do in person is invaluable!
Now look at the student’s hand position after the ladybug is removed:
Beautiful!
2. Give your student a Push Puppet.
My favorite Push Puppet is the Giraffe because it’s tall and dramatic when it collapses.
Here’s the way I like to introduce the Giraffe:
- Start by reversing the roles.
- Tell the student they get to push the button if they see your hand collapse.
- Let your student carefully observe your hand position as you play a simple phrase.
- Suddenly let your own hand position collapse.
- Watch the delight when the student gets to push the button and collapse the Giraffe because of YOUR bad hand position!
- Repeat this several times.
- This helps them understand what to look for and makes it a much more joyful lesson.
- Besides, kids adore playing the teacher.
Watch this video about how to use the giraffe:
Let Giraffe be the Hand Position Teacher
An added benefit of this is the opportunity to let the giraffe take on the role of hand position teacher. You can step out of that role and let the giraffe take on his own persona. Be imaginative with this. Don’t take it all too seriously.
Wouldn’t you be more interested in working on your fingers if it impacted the well-being of a Giraffe? It’s so easy to forget that kids are kids. They want to play. They’d rather experience something than get a lecture. Wouldn’t you?
My favorite thing about using thumb puppets is that they move the focus off me and only something whimsical. And who couldn’t use a little more lightheartedness in their teaching?
How to modify for online teaching:
You’ll have to modify these ideas slightly for online teaching, but there’s a hidden benefit to using any prop online. You can put it RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA and it becomes as big and dramatic as a dinosaur!
When your student’s hand position collapses, it’s fun and lighthearted to have the giraffe collapse! The added size of being full-screen makes it easy to catch their attention and keeps the entire experience from getting too serious.
How to get the ladybugs and giraffes for your “Fall Prop Pack:”
This fall as I begin teaching, each student will get a prop pack with not only stickers and post-it notes, but a Ladybug and Giraffe. I know it will help both my students and me as we negotiate this crazy new world!
NOTE: Currently, the links to Diane’s ladybugs on her site do not work. However, this is what the ladybugs are like. And here are giraffe push puppets.
I like these ideas! I had never heard of push puppets before. I use Sadie the Skunk in my studio. She is a little ginger puppet I gave to my husband many years ago. He loved to bring her into lessons once in a while, at the end of a lesson. After he died in 2018, she became a staple in the studio. I use her for hand position because her shape works. She helps teach improvisation. And, I must admit, she sometimes gives out treats. I love puppets so much that these ideas from Diane are right up my alley!
These are absolutely fabulous! I have a miniature horse that I use to the same effect, and the students always love using a hands-on manipulative with the cuteness factor 🙂 Thanks for the ideas of how to use these during online lessons, as well.