It’s 3pm on a Saturday. You are standing outside the fancy high tea restaurant with your friends, waiting excitedly to be let inside and led to your seat. As soon as the door opens, you hear the beautiful music wafting over to you from the grand piano in the corner. The waiter pulls out your chair, and you sit down at a table with a pink floral tablecloth, lace napkins, doilies, and all possible other delicate and dainty decorations. You order your tea and prepare for the restaurant’s tremendous and famous selection of scones, sandwiches, and petit fours. You enjoy the pianist’s light touch and musical selection – perfect for an afternoon tea with friends!
The above experience is regular for my stuffed monkeys, who, I might add, tend to be a bit spoiled. In my students’ joint lessons (where two or more siblings or friends share the lesson time and space), we often create a Monkey Tea House. The monkeys, waiting in another room, are always so excited — you can almost hear them!
Working together with my students, we do the following:
Step One: put the hot water on (yes, I am serious).
Step Two: set out your tea set or other dishes (tiny ones, if you have them!).
Step Three: choose an herbal tea that you will serve today at the tea house (monkeys don’t need caffeine). Peppermint, hibiscus, ginger, or chamomile are delicious choices, and monkeys tend to love them!
Step Four: get your tea steeping in a teapot!
Step Five: choose some tiny treats to put out, such as raisins, chocolate chips, nuts, seeds, or blueberries (always double check your students’ allergies).
Step Six: write and decorate the menu for the day with paper, crayons or markers, and whatever other craft supplies you would like to use.
Step Seven: discuss repertoire options, including past repertoire, current repertoire, and improvisations. Choose as many pieces as you can, regardless of style (monkeys love all types of music!), to create a setlist in which each musician takes turns playing — including the teacher. Make sure to write your list down!
Step Eight: each player takes turns practicing any pieces that he or she believes need practicing. We are not aiming for perfection – we just want to make sure that the monkeys have a splendid afternoon with music flowing in the background!
Step Nine: make sure everything you need is ready and accessible nearby, and that the table for the monkeys is perfectly set.
Step Ten: open the doors and lead the monkeys to their table.
Step Eleven: take your monkeys’ orders and fill their cups and plates.
Step Twelve: begin playing through your setlist. Enjoy bringing music and life to the monkeys’ social occasion! Part way through, you may want to take a short intermission to make sure that the monkeys’ tea is still hot and that their plates are still full.
This play-based piano lesson is always successful, largely due to three main reasons. First of all, it is goofy, playful, and fun, and the teacher joins as a co-player, rather than an adult who stands separately, assessing and directing. Second, it includes many opportunities for students to take responsibility, make decisions, and follow through on their own choices. Third, all involved play out the role of a professional musician, a person who finds a gig or plans an event, creates a setlist, practices, and performs.
This activity resembles children’s free play, in which all players participate uniquely and from a foundation formed by their own skill levels and interests, all players are given choices and are motivated to work together to create the event, and all can imagine themselves through their play as something that they could be; they can imagine a future possible self.
What a special treat it is for us teachers to be able to join in on the creative, imaginative play of our students. Just don’t forget to sip your tea along the way!
Written by Bronwyn Schuman, Founder of Music Theory Playground™ (Originally written for ARMTA in 2024)