The enthusiasm of young beginners makes for an easy task of getting them to begin a good practicing habit.
Often, with young beginners (ages 4 – 6) piano is one of their very first disciplined learning activities. It is wise to begin easily.
My first activity is simply to go to their instrument each day. When I say “each day” I mean any day they remember. They don’t really need to do anything structured. Just going to the instrument and getting familiar with the new surroundings is an important beginning.
I want the student to learn their instrument is their new “place of encounter”, their new “base of operation”. Just playing on the keys is all that's necessary to become familiar with this new “place of encounter”.
The next step is to review the pages we go over in our formal studio lesson upon returning home after the lesson. However, learning to “practice” is a skill we learn through the first months, and even years, of lessons. At our first lessons I teach the students how to read music notation. It is something that students absorb slowly.
Music is aural. Learning how to listen to ourselves is another skill we develop with each succeeding lesson. Another important skill is the development of a steady beat. All of this is done in an atmosphere of “discovery” and “wonder”.
All of this learning gives students the tools they need to practice intelligently.
So, next, after a few lessons I will ask the student, with the help of the parent, how many days can we realistically practice. At this time, I do not recommend any time limit on each practice session. That will come later. We may begin at 3 or 4 days. If the students practice consistently for 3 days for a few weeks I will encourage the student to increase to 4 days, then 5. I am developing a practice habit.
It is as this point, when we are increasing our daily commitment to practice, I begin to add a time commitment to each day. We could start as low as 5 or 10 minutes per practice session. If we cannot do 5 minutes, I will recommend we at least go to the piano and go over a couple finger exercises or play one piece. Even with this minimum I will consider it a day they practiced. Anything is better than totally neglecting to practice. We don’t want to get into the habit of missing opportunities.
As we begin a time commitment for each practice session and I see some consistency I will as if we can on some days increase the duration by 5 minutes. The benefit of using this method is that each week I can give student encouragement to improve.
If we are habitually practicing for 3 days, can we increase to 4. If we are habitually practicing for 10 minutes each session, can we increase it to 15. If a student falls back on their commitments, I can encourage them to get back to their previous commitments.
This method is very effective with my young beginners. Often, music is one of their first disciplined activities and developing structure in their life is a new concept for them. As Plato understood, “the beginning is the most important part of any work.”
This method of Getting Young Beginners to Practice helps me help students cultivate good beginnings for not only piano study but all their future endeavors.
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