October is one of our fun months in the studio where the room decor changes/add in Halloween decorations and the magical candy bowl appears, (you can read about that here). The beginning of the month each student starts to learn a Halloween specific song that we work through over the 4 weeks, I have a collection of Halloween books and various levels of sheet music that I call “community music” where the student will borrow it and bring it back at the end of the month. I use the Inventory Acquisition, sales and loan log to keep track of who has what music.
Each year in my studio, we have what we call HALLOWEEN WEEK! Halloween week is a special week where the students are encouraged to dress up in their Halloween Costume, I wear mine as well, but we focus the lesson completely what truly makes Halloween, Halloween…THE MUSIC!
I consider it a throw away lesson where we don’t go over anything new in their lesson books but focus solely on musical examples, playing different songs either over Youtube (youtube kids has great little kid appropriate songs that are fun to listen to that aren’t scary) , the origin of Halloween music, sounds, chords, and so forth. This works great and fills in easily for my 30 minute lessons.
Students that have longer lessons we also sightread and start working through 1-2 Intermediate Halloween pieces.
For my advance 60-90 minute lessons students read through Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre or Macdowell Witches Dance.
Each student also gets a treat to take home. This year, I’m making these Monster Rice Crispy Treats.
SECRET: Discuss with each parent ahead of October to see if they are okay with their child learning Halloween songs. Have a book with Thanksgiving themed songs just in case.
