Jessica's Piano Practice - Strategies

Jessica is 6 years old now. She passed Suzuki level 2 when she was 5. Here I will share my experiences in Jessica's daily piano practices at home. Hope they may help other mums who have young kids doing piano.

She started Suzuki piano lesson when she was 4. I still remember that at the first time when we had her electronic keyboard delivered home, she was so excited and she couldn't wait to start learning piano. At the start, I had heard that keeping little child to do piano practice would be a challenge. To get myself ready for the challenge, I read some articles which introduce the strategies of how to keep children to enjoy doing practice. I thought I was ready with finger cross.

She started with 20 minutes private lesson per week. She was encouraged/asked to practise twice a day: 5-10 minutes in the morning before child care/school, and about 20 minutes at night. The strategies that I used were: keep the practice at the same time; associated the practice time with something that happen every day (e.g. before child care/school, and after dinner); rewarded her with some of her favariate treats every time after she finished practice. She didn't have much issues with daily practices during the first year and I kept using the strategies consistently.

Conflicts, arguments related to piano practice started after she started school. There were all sorts of reasons that made me to not keep using my usual strategies consistently, such as  too tired after school, need to be on time for school, homework, no special treats after practice because she needs to go to bed etc. etc. Another important reason that Jessica sort of lost interests in doing practice is because the music was getting harder and the practice time is increasing.

She had hard times in keep piano practice at daily basis for about couple of months. Gradually, I realised that I have to adjust my strategies with the new situations, and these strategies work well for now.

Firstly, she still needs to do practice twice a day, but the time is reduced to about 30 minutes at night. Long time practice is a killer of interests. To be able to have efficient practice, I let her to focus on small part of the music each day. It is just like separating hard part into small parts. It really helps her to feel easy. Secondly, the reward has been changed from treats to reading stories, sometimes is both. Thirdly, I let her to be involved in deciding what she needs to practice and how many times she could do it. I found that she likes to be involved and she normally loves doing it (because that was her decisions).

That's all for today. I might have more posts on this topic later.

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I am a mum of two children, my son Fred and my young girl Jessica. I love my husband and my children. From now on, I will use this place to record bits and pieces about my children, myself, and my husband. Hope one day in future, my whole family, especially Jessica could start writing here too...

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