Free Kids Sheet Music Dipping Donuts

This free kids sheet music, Dipping Donuts, was inspired by a Faber piano book exercise for flexible wrists. Easy piano music, it's fun too! Forming a donut shape with thumb and third finger, players strike each note using a flexible wrist.

I wrote Dipping Donuts to meet a need, to help remedy the stiff and collapsed wrist posture young kids so frequently fall into. To my surprise, many of my students actually LIKE it (that doesn't always happen) and so I offer it to you.

I find myself using this song, along with the "dipping donuts" exercise devised by the Fabers in their cute books for young children, every week with some student or keyboard class. It is a great exercise for a class of kids, because they enjoy the exaggerated flexing motions of the wrist and keeping in rhythm with each other. (We usually sing it together instead of counting.)

(If you are unfamiliar with the Faber family of lesson books, check out their mini-lessons on video on their website, www.pianoteaching.com. Nancy and Randall demonstrate many of their helpful exercises online. I'm not on their payroll, but currently, I prefer their lesson books to all the method book series I've investigated.)

Download free kids sheet music Dipping Donuts

Because both hands start on Middle C and the notes are each played twice, this is an easy song to read for any child who can read all the Snakes. Even the last line, which ventures on down to bass C, is easily read by comparing it to the stepwise motion of Snakes. (You can't have too much review of Middle C. Many students will forget again and again that Middle C is the same note on the piano for both L and R hands. So tell them, over and over.)

There is usually a tussle the first week or two trying to get the student to really "dip" their donut with a controlled wrist motion, instead of stiff-handedly "splashing" the donut into an imaginary mug of milk. Also, some kids want to use the 2 and 1 fingers instead of 3 and 1. I insist on 3, because I think it results in a better rounded shape of the hand.

Try this free kids sheet music as a "count-aloud" song and also as a "say-the-notes-aloud" song. More fun if it is done in a group!








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