How to Help Your Child’s Home Practice (includes a printable checklist)
- Sep 15, 2017
- 4 min read
We all know it takes practice to sound beautiful on any musical instrument you choose. The top concerns from the musical parents are:
How much should my child practice?
How do I know what my child should practice?
How involved should I be on a daily basis?
How do I know if my child is practicing well?
How can I help my child set goals? How to set up a reward system?
As much as you want to help your child, all too often a practice session ended in frustration and tears. I like to share some tips and I hope they are helpful to you.
1. Know what time of day works best for your child to practice and stick on that time. Practice should happen 5-6 days a week, make it a habit.
Most children practice in the afternoon after school, before dinner. But I do see a student who likes to practice in the morning, before the school bus arrives, and it works great for him. The worst time for practice is 10pm! Even if your child is a teenager it is still not a good time because the brain is tired.
If your child is having a lot of tears during practice, first try to practice at a different time. Once you find “the” good time, stick on that time and practice 5-6 days a week. If it is a difficult day, still try to have your little one sit down and play for 5 minutes.
2. Teach your child be organized with all music books, sheet music, keep practice space and musical instrument clean and neat.
This might sound too housekeeping, but I once had a student whose clarinet was filthy, the inside of the instrument was full of yellow gummy thing. He always spent the first 5 minutes of the lesson looking for his books, and most of the time he couldn’t find them. He blamed it on his grandma who cleaned the house. It never occurred to him that it was his responsibility to clean and be organized. Without a doubt he didn’t practice well at home, and without proper instrument you cannot sound right.
3. Help your child to read the assignment sheet. Make sure he/she practices all the assignments, follows the practice advice as the teacher specified.
First, regardless the age of your children, years of musical experience, they still often practice without reading teacher’s instruction. They know what pieces they need to practice, but they don’t always remember what need to be improved and how.
Second, children tend to practice the songs they like, the pieces they are good at, and neglect newer, more challenged songs. Ask your child to rotate the songs once a while so all pieces get equal attention, or practice the newest piece first for couple days right after the lesson. During this practice session, assignments may seem a little longer and harder because they are new. The goal is to help the children feel confident in their ability to learn a new piece and become good at it.
4. Practice with your child.
You don’t have to know the instrument yourself to practice with your child. Just sit there watch the practice session or lesson, take notes, record teacher’s demonstration is a big help.
Younger children will likely need you to sit and practice with them daily, while older children will need a different kind of help. You could remind them of things the teacher said in lessons, watch video together, tap their shoulder to help them keep the beat, ask them play slowly when learn a difficult passage.
Another useful way is be your child’s student, and it is fun to switch role! Have them explain to you what they’re practicing, how to play certain things. Try to point to symbols and asking them what they mean. This will not only help you to know what’s going on, but will reinforce their knowledge.
5. The quality of a practice is more important than the length of a practice.
It is a waste of time if you have a shoddy, goalless practice. Practice is about improving our playing skill in a conscious and methodical way.
If your child just started out and is only 5-6 years old, you can tell them play each piece a certain number of times. Children will figure out this trick very quickly. Next, you can ask them to focus on particular line or difficult spot and play certain amount of times until they feel confident that they can without mistakes, and then do the same thing on other sections of the song.
The ultimate goal is to help children understand what they need to achieve in each step and how well they have to perform at the final stage. 6 years old Sarah told me “You can stop telling me how many times I need to practice for each song. I just play many times until I am satisfied, until it sounds good.”
Final Thoughts
As a kid I never thought practice was fun. I thought practice was work, my responsibility, although I enjoyed playing music. My parents and teachers never tried to make practice fun, there was no reward system. In US “make practice fun” seems to be a trend.
In private lessons, it is a waste of time to learn from playing games. However, in your own home practiceit doesn’t hurt to throw in some games, and you might see some amazing results. It is up to the parents how to apply games, set up reward system, and there are ample of online resources and examples. No matter what you do, it all comes down to “spend time with your child.” What sadden me the most is my parents didn’t come to any of my recitals. I think your children will be happy if you spend time to do something with them!
Click HERE for a summary of this article. Happy practicing!
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