Anatomy Week: teaching older kids

I've been talking about how I do lessons and practicing with my 4 year old, but I want to address older kids.  I've only been a mom for 4 years, but I've been doing this teaching gig for much longer, for 2 year olds up to sixty year olds.  I've learned a thing or two along the way....

Years ago, I attended a masterclass with the famed violinist/violist Pinchas Zuckerman.  In addition to his performing and conduction career, he is a avid educator.  The attendees were a mix of parents and teachers, and  Mr. Zuckerman opened up the floor for any questions they might have for him.  One parent stood up and asked - "How do you motivate a teenager to practice?"

After a good laugh, Mr. Zuckerman said: "You can't.  You make them do it, try and survive those years, and at some point they learn to love it and do it on their own."

I've had a few - VERY few students that picked up their instruments of their own free will and couldn't stop playing.  The rest loved playing, but didn't love the work that went into it.  I honestly don't like practicing either!  But I love the end result, so I muddle through.  And as parents, we know how hard it is to teach our kids to work, but we know it's necessary and we do it anyway.

That being said, practice time doesn't have to be an endless drudgery.  The trick is:

 Make them own it.

That's mainly it.  If they are doing it for themselves, they'll be more invested.  Is that easy to do?  Nooooo.  Is it worth it?  Yes!

Having the student research and choose their own repertoire (from an approved list), finding them friends that play that instrument as well to jam with, finding an honor ensemble they want to audition for, even giving them an audio recorder or video camera and having them be in charge of recording their latest solo as a practice assignment - all kids are different and their goals and motivators are different, but whatever that may be, they all need to want it for themselves to be successful.

And honestly, that goes for just about anything in life.  Which is why teaching them an instrument when they're young is such a powerful teaching tool that goes far beyond making music.  Now if ya'll would remind me of this when WonderGirl turns 13, I'd appreciate it :)  Stay tuned for getting toddlers to sing tomorrow!

Anatomy Week: violin lesson

I want to begin by saying this is how our early lessons go - of course with every child and every stage it changes dramatically.  We'll discuss practice for an older child later.

Me:  Which should we have first, violin or piano time?

WonderGirl: Violin!

Me, internally: wooohoooo!!!

We sit down in the middle of the living room floor on her red mat, I put her 5 pieces of candy/fruit snacks/pretzels off to the side.  We get the violin out togehter, I put the shoulder pad on and she gets the bow out and rosins it.

"Konnichiwa," we say together as we bow.  This is something one of my violin teachers would do with me when I was young, and it signaled the beginning of our lesson.  It is used to give us both a formal transition into our time together, past the informal chit chat we'd had as I entered the studio. It means "good afternoon" in Japanese, but you can pick any phrase you'd like. We also practice bowing - the kind of bow a good violin student makes :)

1.  Bow time.  We start out making llama shapes with our fingers to practice the shape they'll make holding a bow - sometimes she gets me to make us a story about our llamas and we act it out together.  Sometimes I make her wait until the end of a lesson for a llama story.  Then we hold an actual bow and do all the typical games and exercises. 

kissing her "llama"

2.  Violin time.  She stands up - I get on my knees so I'm at eye level - and we get our feet into position.  She takes the violin from rest position to her chin over and over, and we make a game of it.  Currently, she loves to pretend she's a robot putting the violin up.  We sing some songs and do some dances with her violin under her chin to pas the time while she's practicing having it up there.  I'll play the bow on the strings for her sometimes, or she'll pluck the strings I call out.  It's mostly just activities to distract her while she's getting her "violin muscles."

Doing a dance without dropping the violin - woohoo!

3. Together time!  She plays the bow on the strings!  I control this time carefully, dancing the line between her getting to play and experience the sound - and concentrating on her bow arm technique (and that darn shoulder).  We play a few games, a few rhythms and basic songs all on open strings.  She's just moved to using her left hand, but we don't do it for very long.  I mostly want her to get really strong technique on the bow and violin holding before we jump ahead with actual playing of the instrument.  Together time is very short - maybe two minutes or so.  I want it to be a novel thing she looks forward to and isn't too frustrated or sick of it.


4. Domo arigato.  We bow formally and say "Domo arigato" to each other - which means "thank you" in Japanese.  This is for the same reason we say "Konnichiwa" at the beginning of the lesson, and it signals the official end of the lesson and start of us being mother-child again instead of violin teacher-violin student.

All in all, a lesson is rarely longer than 10 minutes.  The patience it takes to play the violin is not natural for a child, so I revel in the luxury of being able to have many mini-lessons with her as we build all that up.  We didn't start out by doing this much - we started just by having a mini lesson practicing bowing and listening without racing all over the room, then adding on to it.  


It's such a wonderful bonding experience!  I don't plan on her choosing to be a professional violinist someday, but I use the violin as a tool to teach patience, hard work, and to have something wonderful to enjoy.  

Anatomy Week: piano practice

Also check out Practicing practicing.

Me:  It's piano time.

WonderGirl:  YAY!/NO! (it varies on the day, hour and second.  Don't them 'em see you sweat!)

If you haven't noticed the massive apparatus on WonderGirl's head, they are some serious headphones we snitched from Daddy's tech stuff.  We have all our music time when the Dude is napping because it's impossible to keep a 20 month old boy out of a super cool big sister's bizness.  To make sure he STAYS napping, she uses headphones.  I stay close by and she stays on task pretty well, although I can always pull the cord out and ask her to play me something if I suspect monkey business.

1.  Let's make a plan.  First we discuss review (warm-up).  I attack this a variety of different ways.  This was one of her earlier charts, before she had a large amount of review under her belt.

I would verbally give her some instructions- play this part so many times, this part so many times, the who song this many times, etc.  When she finished a whole page, she earned some kind of nifty reward, like a Daddy/daughter date.

Now, she has more review and her ability to focus has improved as well, so there's more to do.  Sometimes I'll make a quick list for her.

She likes to have boxes to mark off since it gives her a sense of accomplishment.  Some days I'll make the boxes to decide how many times she'll play it, other times I leave that up to her.  I find out how much she likes a certain song or not.  (I've noticed she's not a fan of A B Bop... so I always add extra turns on that when I'm doing the picking!)

Sometimes I let her make the list.  She gets to decide, and write out the songs she's chosen (I LOVE watching her phonetic abilities blossom doing activities like this!  The spellings are so creative and thoughtful!)

My only musts are that she practices both her new song, and the one just before it.  This ensures that she won't forget a song right after she passes it off and she has a nice library of songs to play whenever he heart desires.

2. Step back.  It's SO hard as a mom to not get in there, but I have to tell myself I've given her all the preparation she needs, she really needs practice working things out on her own.  I'll walk by occasionally and give her a hug or a compliment, and remind her to play on her fingertips.  Sometimes when I hear her getting frustrated, I'll slip in and help her practice the difficult parts.

3.  Check in.  When the list is all done, she comes and tells me and I usually ask her to play her new piece for me.  I give encouragement and advice, and if it isn't perfect I have to bite my tongue, because I know she'll get there eventually as long as she tries every day.  Heck, her last song took at least 3 weeks of tears and sweat to learn, but when it was finally there, there was dancing and rejoicing.  Worth all of the tantrums I had to work overtime to avert!

And when she's done, we move onto the next activity.  She ends up back at the piano throughout the day to play something familiar, show off to daddy or work on the latest song, but I let her play on her terms then.  Structured time is over, and I think an instrument should also be played.  Come by tomorrow for the anatomy of one of our violin lessons!

Anatomy Week: piano lesson

Me:  So we have to clean the living room, have a piano lesson and fold the laundry.  What order should we do them in?

WonderGirl: Piano first and no cleaning.

Me: Yeah, that's not an option.

We sit down at the piano, I put her 5 pieces of candy/fruit snacks/pretzels off to the side.

"Konnichiwa," we say together.  This is something one of my violin teachers would do with me when I was young, and it signaled the beginning of our lesson.  It is used to give us both a formal transition into our time together, past the informal chit chat we'd had as I entered the studio. It means "good afternoon" in Japanese, but you can pick any phrase you'd like.

1. Review.  We start off with something easy, something she enjoys playing.  I gently remind her about posture, but save my main critiques for later.  I like to start off with commenting on as many positives I see her doing - she usually feels so good after that, she unconsciously uses her best form.

2.  The last song we learned.  For review we pick and choose, but we always play the last thing she'd learned.  It's always the weakest (because it's the newest) and we play it through a few times.  If she messes up too much and gets frustrated, I break it down into smaller sections and praise her when she can play those right. I don't want her too frustrated before we do the new stuff.

3.  New song.  We approach this many ways - I'll play it for her first and she'll sing it or clap the rhythm with me, or we'll listen to it on the CD, or if she's excited, she jumps in head first and starts trying to play it.  I don't like playing the entire song for a while, because there's always so many mistakes.  So to keep her from getting bored or annoyed, I like to start in different places, going from the end and working back, or some random place in the middle.

4.  Recital.  When I think she's had enough and we've made enough progress for one lesson, I pick something for her in that song to play for me.  If she's ready to play it all, she does, or I'll just ask for one part played nicely.  I don't sit next to her and critique her - I move to the nearby staircase and sit like an audience member.  When she's done I applaud, and she gets what's left of the treats.

5.  Hug.  I tell her how proud I am of what she's accomplished and how much I love her.  I mostly do this because I can't help it.  Seeing my little girl work hard at something makes my heart so full!

Now, off to fold laundry.  Stay tuned for tomorrow - piano practicing!