What started out as a 100 day practice challenge has been going on for two years now. The kids have practiced every day for 2 years. To me, its an awe inspiring accomplishment. To them, its just what they do.
We've relaxed a bit. You don't practice when your sick, that just encourages martyrdom. If the violins don't fit in the car with the skis for a ski trip, they get left at home. Reasonable exceptions like that.
That said, the practice challenge died a long time ago. It stopped being a challenge and became a way of life. They just practice every day.
Does that make it easy? Nope.
Does it translate to other instruments, math or Spanish? Nope.
Are all the practices cheerful and fun? Hell no.
What? They aren't cheerful and fun? Isn't it supposed to be easy by now?
The standard Suzuki advice to any challenge is that you need to "build the relationship first." Yup, build that relationship and it will all be easy-peasy. As if building a relationship is like building a stone wall that once built will last forever and will over time be covered by pretty flowers. As if once that relationship is built, the kid will never stomp off furious about the bizarre rhythms in Two Grenadiers, and the other one won't be in tears over the slurs in the Vivaldi Concerto that just don't make sense even though they did 6 months ago, and I won't ever get tired.
The wall may be built and covered with pretty flowers, but there are definitely thorns and they stick us every day. We'll keep on going, because the flowers are worth it.
The boys played in a show at a House Concert last night. I had never been to a house concert and didn't know what to expect. It was wonderful! There were kids there! There were families! There were people asking about playing music with kids, as families! About how to get started...
I'm going to write a couple blog posts about getting started. I'm going to start with the youngest audience, babies and toddlers.
Here's what worked for us:
Play lots of music at home, all different kinds of music, all the time. Play your favorite music for your kids. It will become their favorite music! Dance, sing, and act silly. Play music in the car. Sing songs while you walk, work, and play.
- Sign up for a Music Together class. We loved these! They're so much fun. The music is good and generally based on folk songs. There are songs in Spanish. Best of all, it teaches (completely through play) really sound basic music concepts like pitch and rhythm. There are other early childhood classes and they are probably good too, but this is the one we have experience with.
- Go see live music. Bring the kids. Get them up front so they can watch the musicians. Let their early experiences with music show them that music is something that real people make, not just something that comes out of a box. Better yet, take them to see kids playing real music. Kids get really inspired by other kids!
- Take the batteries out of all the plastic toys that play "music". Don't listen to bad kid music. You deserve better and so do your kids. There's a lot of awesome kid music out there. Check out Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell. Throw away the Baby Einstein CDs that you got at your baby shower. There have been studies done that showed that kids that listen to these are less musical than kids who don't.
- Keep the TV off. If you need screen time to take a shower, buy a Dan Zanes concert DVD, or a concert DVD of your favorite band. Gus's favorites were the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions. I can definitely still see the influences.
- Fill the toy box with instruments. Let your kids play them until they break, then replace them with better ones.
- Learn how to play an instrument yourself.
- Stay unplugged. If they don't have video games they won't play them. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll pick up those instruments that you have strewn about the house instead.
I hope you find this helpful. It was certainly fun pulling out all these old pictures!
What started out as a 100 day practice challenge has been going on for two years now. The kids have practiced every day for 2 years. To me, its an awe inspiring accomplishment. To them, its just what they do.
The standard Suzuki advice to any challenge is that you need to "build the relationship first." Yup, build that relationship and it will all be easy-peasy. As if building a relationship is like building a stone wall that once built will last forever and will over time be covered by pretty flowers. As if once that relationship is built, the kid will never stomp off furious about the bizarre rhythms in Two Grenadiers, and the other one won't be in tears over the slurs in the Vivaldi Concerto that just don't make sense even though they did 6 months ago, and I won't ever get tired.
