This is one of my all time favorite ways of helping the students to recognize intervals by sight.  This has a lot to do with repetition, but the students hardly even recognize that they are learning the intervals by repetition because they are consumed in the game.

Level: Beginner

Objective: To review intervals

Materials:

• Interval cards by pianimation.com, at least 2 copies, printed and cut out (I don’t use the word cards for this game — just the images)
• The board game Sorry

Players needed: works best with 2 or more players

Game Set-up:

Place the interval cards face down in the middle.

Game Play: 

The students draw a card and play across the game board.  All player’s game pieces begin in the “Start” bubble.

The rules are as follows.  The interval that they draw from the draw pile allows them to:

• 1st, 3rd, 5th — get out of Start
• 2nd – go 2 and go again
• 4th – go backwards four
• 6th – switch opponents
• 7th – split between 2 pawns
• 8va – go from anywhere on the game board directly to home (the kids love drawing on octave for this reason)

In the game of Sorry, every time you land on a triangle, you can “slide” down to the end of the line.  The stipulation to that is that you can’t slide on your own color — only on everyone else’s.  If you happen to bump out another player while they are on that slide, then they must go back to “Start”.

Anytime you land on another player, they must go back to “Start”.

The player who can get all of their game pieces into the “Home” position first, is the winner!

Because this game can get lengthy, I usually only have the students play with 2-3 game pieces.  This helps make it not take up quite as much time.

The students love this game and they catch on quickly to the intervals and hope for certain intervals to come up…meaning that they end up loving intervals and are excited to see and identify them in their music after playing a game like this.

You can play with just you and your student, or you can play as a group for group lessons.

Click here for more really fun games and activities for teaching piano!

PianoTels

Tel loves her life as a piano player, a piano teacher, and a mom. Amid piano blogging, piano teaching, and piano playing, she loves a chance to fit in a good exercise class, volunteer at her kids’ school and at her church, and go on long dates with her husband. Full bio at About Tel.