The Music Experience is a weekly 45 minute session for third through sixth grade children. Children can perform, read, compose, and experience music, no prior music knowledge necessary.
Cost is $25 for the first child and $15 for additional family members. POC: Jane McKee and Mary O’Connor.
Miss Jane has a BME in Music Education and has taught music and directed choirs for all ages. She sings, rings bells, plays piano and flute, and plays autoharp in the Pender Praise Band.
Miss Jane is presently a teacher for FCPS schools. She is looking forward to meeting you in our Music Experience!
Miss Mary has a BA in Music Education and has taught piano lessons for many years as well as directed handbell/chime choirs for children. She plays piano, sings, rings handbells, and plays in a recorder quartet. She has sung bass in a woman’s Barbershop Chorus.
Miss Mary is currently a private piano teacher and she’s very excited to meet you in our Music Experience!
Practice sessions will be held in the choir room and sanctuary.
The Music Experience is a weekly 45 minute session for third through sixth grade children. Children can perform, read, compose, and experience music, no prior music knowledge necessary.
Cost is $25 for the first child and $15 for additional family members. POC: Jane McKee and Mary O’Connor.
Miss Jane has a BME in Music Education and has taught music and directed choirs for all ages. She sings, rings bells, plays piano and flute, and plays autoharp in the Pender Praise Band.
Miss Jane is presently a teacher for FCPS schools. She is looking forward to meeting you in our Music Experience!
Miss Mary has a BA in Music Education and has taught piano lessons for many years as well as directed handbell/chime choirs for children. She plays piano, sings, rings handbells, and plays in a recorder quartet. She has sung bass in a woman’s Barbershop Chorus.
Miss Mary is currently a private piano teacher and she’s very excited to meet you in our Music Experience!
Practice sessions will be held in the choir room and sanctuary.
We often use this app in the O’Connor Music Studio. There is a new update coming very soon that looks like it will be even better.
Note Rush boosts your note reading speed and accuracy, building a strong mental model of where each written note is on your instrument.
Note Rush 2nd Edition: What’s New?
Refreshed user interface: Note Rush 2nd Edition boasts a modern, colorful new interface that is visually appealing and user-friendly.
Extended instrument support offering an expanded library of built-in levels designed for various instruments, including piano, guitar, violin, flute, and more.
Enhanced level designer system with support for Treble and Bass clefs as well as Grand Staff (Tenor and Alto coming soon) and up to 6 ledger lines!
Save custom levels within the app for easy access: No more hunting through the camera roll!
Unique landmarks-based hints system! Landmark notes are a great way to get a firm grasp of the staff, and now Note Rush brings this approach into the learning experience. Learn more
New themes including Fruit Smash and Cute Bird, and a new scrolling theme selector, making it quicker to select a theme and get playing.
New Audio Recognition Engine to make gameplay faster and more reliable.
How it Works
Note Rush is like a virtual flash card deck for all ages that listens to you play each note, giving instant feedback and awarding stars based on speed and accuracy.
Race against the clock to improve your performance or hide the timer to gently engage those just starting out with the staff.
Includes built-in levels for piano and a range of other instruments as well as custom level design.
If you want to use it at home, the current cost is only $4.99 (not a subscription, one-time only) but it will be going up soon to 8.99.
Composed for mid-primer piano students, Who Slobbered On My Songbook? is packed with piano pieces and activities that reinforce playing in the C 5-finger scales.
This laugh-out-loud resource follows the hilarious adventures of a homework-hungry dog who has been framed for chewy crime he didn’t commit.
Inside you will discover 7 piano solos, a teacher-student duet, warm-up exercises, note reading games, sight-reading and rhythm activities, a practice tracker, and a certificate.
If you want to check it out, the Studio has a couple copies. As always, students who would benefit from this book will get a free copy.
I’m thankful for my piano studio, my students, and my piano 🙂 During Covid, I was especially thankful for the Internet!
When I was growing up, my dad was a minister, meaning we lived in whatever parsonage the church chose to let us live in. The one we had in Pawcatuck, CT had an upright piano that someone had put out in the sunroom. Not the best place for a piano, but I digress.
Since we had the piano already, someone – probably my mom – decided that I would take lessons. We had the organist from the Baptist church just across the river in Westerly, RI
Apparently, Clara Pashley was fondly remembered at the church (now Central Baptist Church) since she was mentioned in an article from 2010.
Miss Pashley walked to our house each week and taught me (and my mom who was always listening in) piano for the grand sum of 25 cents.
I started with Ada Richter’s classic Teaching Little Fingers to Play, which has now been morphed into the John Thompson library.
From there, it was the Michael Aaron series, and some sheet music.
There was no music store in our town, so I have no idea where any of this music came from – but I still have it all.
My parents did very well for their quarter a week investment, especially since my mom paid good attention and was able to beef up lessons she’d had as a child. Later on, she played well enough that she was church organist for a local Roman Catholic Church.
But I digress…
In those days, kids couldn’t do a whole lot of activities, so in 6th grade, I decided I wanted to be a Girl Scout. Bye, bye Clara.
Girl Scouts didn’t last long but I did play piano in a talent show. I remember, I carefully cut Burgmüller’s Ballade out of my Michael Aaron book and made a nice construction paper cover. (I still have this, too)
I doubt that I played this well but here’s what it was supposed to sound like:
A few years intervened and moved to Springfield, MA. The parsonage piano there was in terrible shape and in the dark, never-used basement. But I decided to make it mine and cleared up the area around it and started “practicing”.
My Junior or Senior year of High School I decided I wanted to major in music in college. I decided to learn, on my own, a piano arrangement of Aragonaise by Jules Massenet. I have no idea why or where that sheet music came from but I started working furiously on this piece.
Hopefully, at some point, it should have sounded like this:
I started pedaling (no pun intended!) my music to the Universities of Connecticut and Massachusetts and ended up at UMass Amherst since we were state residents.
Early morning gym classes (usually swimming), then wet hair traipsing across campus to music theory in winter 5 days a week. AARRGGH!
But I stuck it out.
My wonderful piano teacher, Howard Lebow, was killed in a car accident during my sophomore year and I was devastated. There was more about him in a post on January 26, 2022 here on https://atomic-temporary-44596882.wpcomstaging.com
I took yet another break from piano lessons – but I kept playing.
After DH graduated, we moved to Milwaukee, WI for his graduate school. Besides working 2 jobs, I found time to commandeer the practice rooms at the University of Wisconsin. I also found a teacher at the Schaum School of Music. She was amazed that I had no piano at home to practice on.
When we later moved to Alexandria, VA my DH gave me a choice of new car or piano. So, I found a used piano. The owner had acquired it in a divorce and wanted it gone. Yesterday. She even paid to move it out of her apartment.
The new-to-me piano took up half our living room. When my parents came to visit, their feet we under my piano as I slept.
I found yet another new piano teacher and she is still my best friend to this day.
That piano moved to several locations before I bought a brand new Yamaha grand piano. The movers accidently brought in the wrong one and I made them return it. The people who lived in an apartment were probably unhappy when they had to return my piano and take their own new baby grand back.
I started teaching as a traveling piano teacher in Silver Spring, Maryland. I continued that in Wilmington, DE.
When we got to Fairfax, VA I decided no more traveling. Students would come to me. And so they have since 1973.
What is supposed to be our living room is filled with music books, electric keyboards, the grand piano, 2 organs, 2 violins, 2 clarinets, recorders, a dulcimer and other musical “stuff”.
Piano playing has gotten me through the worst times of my life. Teaching has been a lifeline for me, as well.
I am so thankful for the students who have stayed with me over the years and the new ones I have found…on the internet.
Take a bow, Alon Kaplan, for creating the first fun Summer Camp song, Disney hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”
Available in three versions, it can be found in the new ‘Summer Camp’ category in the Library or tap the button on the main menu.
Tune in each week to see which other free songs will be released in Summer Camp to keep your students sharp. And remember, every 3-star performance gives your students the chance to win an Amazon Gift Card. Enjoy!
This is a family-friendly event with the little ones in mind. Adults and children are invited to walk to Jerusalem along with Jesus. There will be crafts and fun activities that will help the kids understand Easter.
Join us in The Gathering Place rain or shine! The event will run from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Learn about the Seder, Decorate an Easter Egg, Stories of Jesus, Make a “God’s Eye”, Veggie Tales: “The Night Before Easter”, Decorate the Cross and Pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.
These collectible cards will excite and motivate your beginning students. Your student will get one when they complete a task or accomplish a goal in their musical journey! Each level has fifty-four achievement cards. There are enough for the whole year.
Bravo Badges are designed to be eye-catching. Your students will love showing off their collection.
When the next levels become available, intermediate students will be able to collect these, as well.
Summer Camp is where the Home Challenge usually is, with HC right underneath. There are 3 levels of Mission Impossible. Learn mode is available if necessary.
Composed for mid-primer piano students, 
MaryO'Studio 