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How
Do You Keep a Young Student
Interested and Having Fun??? |
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|
How
Do You Keep a Young Student
Interested and Having Fun??? |
|
Is Practice Becoming a Chore? We've learned a few tricks with our budding musician that have helped us. These are the result of our own ideas and those of others, including her instructor. The trick seems to be in changing the "game" frequently as well as the post-practice 'reward'. Maybe these will help you. If you know of other ideas, please Contact Us and we will post your ideas here too. Good luck!
All of the following are used as rewards - a way to show progress through the lesson. They are primarily focused on the very young student because... that's what we have!
GAMES DURING PRACTICE
- BEAD STRING
Use a 2 foot string and some beads. It really doesn't matter what they look like or what size. Just tie knots on both ends and move 1 bead at a time to the other side for each part of the lesson completely successfully.
- ABACUS
Same concept as above. Move a bead for each successful part of the lesson. Our budding musician actually wanted to play parts of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star more than we had planned because she wanted to get all the beads on one line to the other side!
- BARREL OF MONKEYS!
A recent addition to our bag of tricks. You remember Barrel of Monkeys, right? They're cheap (ours were $1.99) and fun for kids. We use ours as follows: (1) hang the first monkey on the music stand; (2) place the barrel on the floor directly underneath the hanging monkey; (3) for each successful step, let the child add another monkey. The objective of the game is to get the string of monkeys to reach all the way down to the barrel. Thus, the child is letting the monkeys "go home". Simple, but effective.
- TOYS/DOLLS
Get 5 or more small toys or dolls. Place them on a couch or other piece of furniture, near the student's open guitar case. Each successful step allows one toy to jump into the case.
- GAME PIECES
Use any board game, preferably something extremely simple. Or, make a simple board game by drawing squares on a piece of paper. Again, each successful step causes the child's game piece to progress. You, as the teacher, also have a game piece. You can move yours if the child doesn't 'do it right'. However, as just about any effort by the child is rewarded, you don't get to move much. This lets the child win the game, thus being successful on two fronts. It works!
- OUR GAMES
Play MyMusicFriend.com's games with your child. They're free and offer a fun change of pace. Most kids love computers and these games transfer the act of learning music to something they already like.
- TRADE ROLES
Our independent little girl loves to change roles and as her instructor states, "Teaching is often one of the best ways to learn." So, take a guitar and get into a horrible playing position - make it fun! Ask, "Is this perfect heart-to-heart posture?" The child will laugh and say 'No'. Then, you let the child 'fix' you. It really reinforces the learning process. Also, you as the teacher can play the guitar and provide some obviously wrong notes. Ask the child to tell you what you're doing wrong. Play an obvious buzz note or mush note and let them catch you at it.
- MORE? Please give us your ideas - CONTACT US
Important Note: The above are meant to make practice a little more fun and show progression through the lesson. However, at times your child may become more interested in the games than the practice (like ours does on occasion). It's important to remind them that you're there to do a lesson and if the games get in the way of that, they will end...
SIMPLE REWARDS AFTER PRACTICE (Please see our article on "Motivation"!)
- STICKERS
Get some music related stickers from your local music store. The student gets a sticker after each practice. We put our music stickers on her guitar case. It's a way of showing how many practices she's done. If they lose interest and don't complete the practice... no sticker.
- GUM OR CANDY
Same as above, just a different reward.
- GET TO WATCH A SHOW OR PLAY ON THE COMPUTER
Same as above, just a different reward.
- MORE? Please give us your ideas - CONTACT US
- MyMusicFriend.com
[Created: 05/08/2002]
[Last Updated: 02/08/2003]