I've recently taken on some younger pupils in piano. They often find 1/2 hour lesson a bit long and you can see their concentration waning half way through. For my older pupils (or at least, the ones who've learnt the basics such as clefs, note values, rests etc) I've got games that I play with them, but i'm struggling to think of fun things to do with kids who haven't yet learnt what a crotchet really is. Any suggestions?

Much appreciated

This is quite a good note-naming one:
Use and old twister game and put draw on the back of the mat a stave with the treble and bass clef, then on the twister board for left hand draw a bass clef and for right hand draw a treble clef and instead of colours put note names. Then the pupil can spin the board and it will say a note and then have to stand on the mat and 'be' the note! This game can also be for more than one player.
My piano teacher uses this one and it goes down a treat ...not sure if I've explained this too well though!

With my very young pupils, I do singing and some rhythm work with percussion instruments between "piano" lessons. With my very, very young pupils, I also add "music & movement" type of activities.

Do you know any card tricks?

I've got some flash cards, which are nothing new - but for the very young ones, a bit of magic livens them up! Especially the one where the card they picked "appears" inside the piano stool they've been sitting on. Tricks where the cards "magically" shuffle into the order of a scale help them to recognise patterns, and of course, they have to learn to recognise the notes and their names - so they can remember which one they picked

xxx

Hi,

Thanks for this - I do the singing and rhythm work. Am intrigued with the music and movement side of things. Can you explain more.

Apologies for jumping in here, but both the Kodály and Dalcroze approaches have a lot to offer music students of all ages - the former focuses on singing and the latter on movement and they are very complementary. There are several institutions (eg Guildhall) where the children learn music through both approaches as well as having instrumental lessons.