Now, if I could just find some Patience Potion to help me during practices....

Spicing Up Practice

Having such a great teacher with such clear direction put some fire under me. (The teacher is just as much for me as for my boys.) I decided that I wanted to spice up practicing with some fun gadgets. After all, if it isn’t fun, then who wants to do it?

For some reason, it works to say “Who do you want to play for this time?” I place the one he chooses on his music stand or on the floor where he can easily see it. I just saved pictures from magazines or DVD covers and laminate them. (I have a lot more girly-princessy choices and need to build up our boy-friendly collection.)

The boys also like to put these pictures (or pennies) under their feet to remind them to keep their feet “planted.”

For repetition, we’ve used this foam stick on the left for a few years. Each time they repeat an exercise or a piece (whatever), we move one foam. Andrew talks about the rest of the foamies wanting to “join the party.” I just added this fun bead version to our options.

I bought some IKEA finger puppets to either put on the end of the bow or to hold up on my finger (like the shark for when they do something they shouldn’t) or the turtle for slow, rabbit for fast... I’m still experimenting.

I bought some “Tempo Tape” to highlight parts of the music. It removes really easily and cleanly.

I’m resurrecting some old ideas. For each part of practice, he moves the car to the next space. This helps him see progress and an end in sight for practicing that day. I didn’t want to commit to specific labels, so cut out pieces of clear plastic and labeled them with a Sharpie. I keep them in an envelope taped to the back of the chart.

I haven’t done this one in a while, but it can sure take the edge off of repetitions or an exercise the child doesn’t like, such as sight-reading practice. For each correct line or repetition the child earns a goldfish. (We learned this one from our violin teacher.)

The GRAND Staff

My mother-in-law made this amazing, life-size grand staff for us (out of a shower curtain) along with the musical note bean bags.

There are countless games you can play. Here, Andrew is choosing a note to aim for. He says it first, throws the beanbag, then fixes it if it isn’t perfectly on the line or space he was going for.

Musical Twister (I’d love to make a spinner for it someday).

Here, I asked Andrew to say the notes as he stepped on each line or space, walking forward and backward.

Another cute thing M’Jean does is to have the kids drive a car around each clef, and land on the line that is the name of that clef (Treble Clef = G-clef; Bass Clef = F-clef).

M’Jean has a stash of coins labeled with note names. She has the kids label the lines or spaces with notes. Then she’ll remove a few while they close their eyes, and have them then figure out which notes are missing and re-label them, or mixes them up and has the child fix them. She lets them take turns while she closes her eyes, too.

She has many more games up her sleeve. Wish I knew them all!

M’Jean also gave us this small white board - grand staff for note practice.

We use regular circle magnets for notes.

M’Jean invented these puppets for skipping notes in music. They are named “Jibbidy-F and A-C-E.” She uses them on the piano as well as with the GRAND staff and whiteboard note work.

We created a little “cello studio” in our living room since I was tired of all of our things being shuffled around and looking out of place. I love it!

With violin, the girls would line up pictures on the floor, and then move from one to the other as they did a repetition. Cello is harder since they have to sit down the whole time.