Sophie (with kleenex) and Erin with theory materials at home, where they're popular as well. Clockwise around the Musopoly board from the girls: Music Alphabet Cards, Chromatic Circle, String Builder and magnetic wand, Rhythm Cards, Tempo Cards, Dictation Slate.

This page contains links to printable Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files which can be used to create music theory game materials for young violinists.

Recently I've begun experimenting with a music theory class. I have a cluster of Book 1 and 2 students who have various levels of note-reading ability, and I wanted a fun, group-based way of ensuring there weren't any glaring holes in their basic understanding of theory. I was really impressed with what I'd seen of Michiko Yurko's Music Mind Games program, but I felt that for violinists, something less keyboard oriented would be desireable.

Gradually I'm coming up with additions and replacements for some of the MMG materials that seem to suit my little violin players. I wanted something a little more treble-clef and fingerboard oriented.

I make use of the large Musopoly board game, and I've used my computer printer to generate cards that replace the bass clef note cards. (I've also added fermata and symbol cards that are more strings-oriented, for instance, including down-bow and slurred-bowing cards.) The replacement cards for the bass clef cards have a fingerboard diagram on one side indicating a particular note on a particular place on the fingerboard. Both location and note-name are indicated. The "answer" is given on the staff on the flipside. The object of this card is to show (using the standard MMG materials... magic notes and staff dictation cards) where the note is notated on the staff. I printed them on green cardstock and then had them laminated. They could be used as flashcards, but it's much more fun to use them in group-based games. Michiko Yurko's book "Music Mind Games" has hundreds of games described and inspiration for many more.

Next, I've created a large-scale violin fingerboard diagram that can be used with the MMG "magic notes" (metal-rimmed transparent plastic bingo markers). I called this a "String Builder" and it is used to build scale patterns starting on various notes, or to perform the reverse of the task described above: to illustrate how a particular pitch on the staff would be played on the violin. I printed these on white cardstock because the magic note colours are so pretty. Again, laminating them makes them much stiffer and more durable.

Your browser will need Acrobat Reader, a free downloadable plugin, to view and print these forms.

Fingering Cards You will need front and back for each card. The cards cover natural-note pitches from open G to high B. Print the pages front and back on the same sheet, and then cut them into cards that are 8 1/2" (full width of the page) by 4 1/4". The little ticks on the edges are intending as cutting guides, but I think some of them are in the wrong places. Sorry.

• Fingering cards

String Builder Cards Each of these is exactly half an 8 1/2" x 11" page of cardstock. Print them off (they are arranged two per page) and then cut the page in half.

• String Builder Cards