Bowhold practice

It's a typical violin teacher trick to use things in place of an actual violin and bow at the early stages.  I have a dowel rod that I use for lots of different exercises for early bow technique.  I taped a clothespin on to simulate the frog, and we practiced tapping her pinky up and down.  Then it occurred to me that this would be the perfect time to use that cool sport function on my next fancy camera!

Behold the awesome power of the gif!



Okay, that was fun :)  Another thing we came up with when trying to get more comfortable with bowhold was this little ditty:

One Two Three (place first second and third fingers on the stick on the first knuckle) and Thumb on the stick (thumb down) then you put down the Pinky on the tip tip tip (tap pinky in place three times)!

click on image for full size

Then we flip the hand over ans say Thumb check! to make sure her thumb is curved outwards and not bent inwards. I surprise her with Thumb check! every now and then while we're doing something else, and if it's bent inwards I correct it, and if it's right I fawn all over her (a really successful motivating technique for WonderGirl:)

So that's a great little song we sing every time she picks up her bow and her hand is looking really fantastic.  If anyone wants, I can make a video of myself doing it.  Being the teacher and cameraman is not always easy :)  Do you have any bowhold tricks you'd like to share?