"Oh I wish it could be Christmas every day"

For their last few lessons this term, many of my pupils are learning to play Christmas carols.  Every year I am amazed that a pupil who perhaps hasn't been doing a lot of practise and therefore been making fairly slow practise suddenly seems to find plenty of time to learn Christmas music and will end up learning almost all the Christmas carols I can get hold of!  The idea of playing songs they know and being able to perform them to friends and family seems to be really motivate them to practise.  

In that sense then, I do "wish it could be Christmas every day".  However, this also demonstrates how giving pupils tunes that they know is a great way of motivating them to practise and showing them that learning the piano can be very rewarding.  Some of my pupils have learned pop tunes, music from Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean and TV theme tunes.  There is an excellent series of books called "Really Easy Piano" but sometimes I also find myself making my own arrangements of pieces.

So while its great to give some pupils some seasonal music to learn at this time of year, I'll also try to give them tunes that they recognise throughout the year as well as pieces from their tuition books and perhaps exam pieces if they decide to work towards grades.