The After Dinner Magnet

We got home late from the kids' music lessons, 3 hours of back-to-back Suzuki lessons.  Everyone's hungry.  Huck wants to set up his new Hot Wheels Track; Gus wants to play a Lego game.  Daddy was listening to Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions on the way home and is fooling around with Oklahoma Home.  He asks if anyone else wants to play.  I'm doing the dishes; the kids say no.  

He plays it again.  I'm done with the dishes and grab my mandolin.  Gus gets his fiddle.  Huck picks up his washboard and thimbles.  They can't resist.  They're drawn together like magnets.  We meet up in the living room and attempt Oklahoma Home from the book.  Bruce Springsteen plays it in E, we think.  Gus grumbles about crazy keys and capos, so we try it in D.  It works pretty well.  We've got a new song and its a lot of fun.  The kids are singing the backup harmonies.  It may be a new favorite.  We play a couple more and its time to put the kids to bed.  That's it.  Three songs after dinner.   

Was it like this last year?  No.  Gus could hold down the melody, but generally played it too fast.  Eric and I could only play a couple of chords, couldn't get the changes in the right place, and didn't sing.  No way.  Huck was 5.  I insisted that we try it to play music together, and inevitably someone stomped away mad, or everyone did.  But it was something that we believed in, so we kept trying, and we kept practicing.  We practiced individually and together.  We started singing together and playing two chord songs.  Our first was Reuben's Train.  It's a great tune.  Its got a train.  What more do you need?  Our second was Crawdad Song.  Its also a great tune.  Its about fishing and its easy to write your own silly verses about Moses the cat (see below).   We kept at it.  It became easier, it became fun, and it became irresistible.

Crawdad Song

You get a line and I'll get a pole honey
You get a line and I'll get a pole, babe
You get a line and I'll get a pole
And we'll go down to the crawdad hole
Honey, baby mine

Moses in the basket watching us play honey
Moses in the basket watching us play, babe
Moses in the basket watching us play
Bluegrass tunes all through the day
Honey, baby mine. 

Wordless Wednesday February 8, 2012 - Why I Practice Every Day

Games we play!

How do I get the kids to practice?  

We do two things that make practice easy. 

1. Practice is a habit.  Its a habit because of our 100 day practice challenge (and 200 and 300).  
2. We make practice fun.  Is it always fun?  No.  But we try.

How so we make it fun?  We play games...lots and lots of games.  

What kinds of games? 

All kinds!

Where do we get the games? 

Usually we make them.  I used to spend a lot of time making up games customized with the songs that they are working on, but I've gotten more efficient.  Now to make the games  reusable, I either use numbers and assign the numbers to a particular piece of their practice, or we draw cards.

Gus made this particular game.  We use templates that we find on the internet, like those found on Donna Young's wonderful webpage.

And then either print them out and write on them or, if we're feeling fancy, edit them using Jarnal.  The game pieces are usually lego guys, or precious little bunnies.

I even reuse the game boards for math and reading games.  I keep them in a folder, and rotate them.  We sometimes go weeks without playing one, and some weeks we play one each day.

On particularly tough days, we use a chocolate coin as the game piece, to be eaten when the game is finished.  Its amazing what a little chocolate can accomplish.

Fishing for songs.

Many of the games are very simple.  Just roll 2 dice and the first tells you what song to play and the second tells you how many times to play it.

Some of the games are more involved and take forever, like fishing for paperclipped fish using a magnet on a string.  Fishing is Huck's favorite.  Honestly, it drives me crazy.

But the cat loves it.

The Game gives the assignments, not me!

Monkeys are great for counting songs or repetitions.

 But by far the best way to make practice fun is to play music together.

Day 321 of our 100 Day Practice Challenge - Overcoming the Travel Hurdle

Yep, the title is right.   We started our 100 day practice challenge 321 days ago.  If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a 100 day challenge, I'll explain.  The idea is to practice your instrument for 100 consequetive days.  Almost a year ago, we decided, as a family, to commit ourselves to practicing every day.  This wasn't a huge change for the kids.  They take Suzuki violin and practiced just about every day anyway.  At least I thought they did.  But once we started the challenge I realized that on the busy or difficult days we had often skipped practice.  It was a huge change for Eric and me.  We had been playing guitar and mandolin, respectively, for about half a year, and were averaging about 3 practices a week, usually after the kids were in bed.

So we decided to practice every day for 100 days.  We each picked an exception.  Eric said that it wouldn't count to miss a day if you had to travel and couldn't bring your instrument.  I said that you didn't have to practice if you were sick.  We set a three song minimum.  A day counted if you played three songs, any songs.  We each chose a "prize" for the end of 100 days, and then agreed on a shared prize of a big bike trip together.  

We celebrated lots of little milestones.  We bought a pizza on day 10, baked a cake on day 25, went to an amusement park on day 50, and a movie on day 100.  We still haven't managed a multi-day bike trip, but by the time we got to 100 days we had all realized that the true prize was the music.  We saw huge progress in our playing, but even better, practice had become easy and automatic.

It think it worked because we were all doing it together.  At the beginning of each day, I figured out where practice would fit, and then I made it fit.  At the end of the day we would ask each other if we had all practiced.  We were accountable and all working toward the same goal.

So when we got to 100 days, we kept going, and going, and going.  We celebrate the milestones less and don't notice the challenges much at all.

We've had a ski weekend planned for Huck's birthday for months and I gave the kids the option to use their "travel exception."  They were horrified!  They've made it this far and weren't going to miss a couple days for a ski trip. 

So we packed their violins.  Unfortunately, the guitar and mandolin simply didn't fit, so Mom and Dad used the exception.

Not only did the boys play their 3 song minimum each day, they got to give their Grandparents' a full concert!

Thank goodness for little instruments!

Now we just need to figure out how to pack the instruments for our week-long bike trip this summer.