Piano Practice Games

Make learning fun with these piano practice games!

It’s important to play a piano song over and over again to master it. Turn boring repetition into fun by playing a game together with your piano student. Discover our list of piano practice games below, and find even more piano games for kids here.

In this brief video, you’ll get a glimpse of the awesome practice games featured on the Hoffman Academy website: 

Alphabet Towers: An outstanding game for getting fluent at the musical alphabet.
Mystery Melodies: Learn to recognize short melodic phrases by sight and by ear.
Piano Street: Memorize what all white keys on the piano look like.
Rhythm Shredder: An intense, skateboard-themed game for teaching rhythm.
Staff Crawler: Help the inchworm get his lunch by identifying staff notes.
Rhythm Train: Load up rhythms on the train cars to match what you hear.
Sea Turtle Shuffle: Identify notes on the staff and help the baby sea turtles find their way to the water!

Piano Practice Game #1: Earn Your Age

• Choose 1 short section of a song to work on (usually about one line of music).
• Gather a pile of pennies (or small candies or any other small object).
• In this piano practice game, the child plays the section on the piano.
• If every note was perfect without a single missed note, then you win a penny! (It is OK if the rhythm isn’t perfect—that will come in time. But be very strict about 100% accuracy with the notes).
• If the child misses a note in this piano practice game, then he/she loses a penny (no penalty if none have been earned yet)
• When you collect as many pennies as your age, you win!

Piano Practice Game #2: Escape

• Find a small animal figurine or action figure that can balance on one of the black keys of the piano (or you can always use a penny or a button and just use imagination).
• Tell the student, “This sheep (or soldier or princess) was captured by an evil king.” Place the figure on one of the black keys near the highest (or lowest) end of the piano.
• Say, “Every time you play this measure (or line/section) with no missed notes you can move the sheep one black key closer to the edge of the piano keys. If you miss a note, the sheep will move backwards, deeper into jail. When the sheep makes it to the edge of the piano, it escapes! And you win!”
• Determine your initial placement of the figure based on how many repetitions you think the child can succeed at. Place the figure closer to the edge to make it easier.
• If the game proves too difficult, you can eliminate the rule about moving backwards, or create a “wall” that blocks any negative movement past a certain point.
• Remember that you want the child to feel challenged, but not overwhelmed. Keep the spirit of the game fun and lighthearted. Add humor and imagination as you feel inspired.

Piano Practice Game #3: Volcano

• This is a great piano practice game to use when you need help encouraging a student to solve a particular issue with their playing, whether it be a posture issue or a persistent wrong note.
• Place five pennies on the piano. Say, “These five coins are your soldiers. Your job is to save as many as you can from falling into the volcano. Every time you (choose only ONE issue: play a missed note OR drop your wrist OR play with fingers sticking up in the air, etc.), one soldier is going to fall into the lava! At the end, a helicopter will come and rescue any soldiers that haven’t fallen in. Let’s see how many soldiers you can save!”
• The student plays. Whenever a missed note/dropped wrist/whatever occurs, the teacher takes a penny off the piano, and pretends that it falls into the volcano, complete with dramatic sound effects! You know, the groaning-falling-into-a-deep-pit sound.
• After playing, pretend that the helicopter comes, and have the surviving soldiers say “thank you” to the student. Focus on the positive by saying something like, “These 2 soldiers say ‘thank you’ for saving them.”
• Ask the child if they would like to try to save more soldiers on their next round
• If falling into a volcano is too scary for a young or sensitive child, you could do something like frogs falling off a log into a swamp.

Piano Practice Game #4: Parrot Is Watching

• Use a finger puppet, or any kind of animal or human figurine
• Tell the student that Parrot the Puppet loves to watch kids play the piano, but he really only likes seeing wrists that are level (or whatever the issue is). Say, “If your wrist drops down, then Parrot is going to turn around the other way. But, as long as your wrist is level, Parrot will be watching you.”
• The student plays and Parrot responds by either watching or turning around.

Piano Practice Game #5: Fireworks

• To start this game, place five pennies on the piano. Say, “These five pennies are five fireworks. Every time you miss a note (or whatever the issue is), one firework is going to go off early.” Demonstrate the firework exploding in the air with sound effects. Continue to explain, “When you finish, you get to set off any remaining fireworks yourself.”
• The student plays. When the student misses a note, the teacher sets off a firework. At the end, the student gets to set off all the fireworks that remain.

We hope you enjoy these piano practice games together with your piano student. Subscribe to Hoffman Academy Premium and get access to online games, sheet music, downloadable resources, progress tracking, and much more!