Playing has always been a part of learning and growing, apart from providing enjoyment and fun. Just as lion cubs learn by romping and pretend fights, human children learn about their world through playing.
From Cognitive Fitness, published in the Harvard Business Review: "Play engages the prefrontal cortex, feeding our highest cognitive functions...Play improves our ability to reason and to understand the world...Play can be a powerful tool for allowing people to develop creative capacity and cognitive health."
An important part of playing for young children is playing with parents, and there should be some time for this every day. A toy company some years ago asked a large number of five-year olds what they would like for Christmas, and their survey found that, rather than the new X-Box or Bratz doll, many children wanted more time with parents!
Practice Games
Why not? Even we adults enjoy learning in a joyful and amusing setting. The more you laugh, the more you retain!
Here are some fun techniques that will enrich the music learning process for all:
Story Time
Listen to different classical pieces and tell stories letting the mood of the music feed your fantasy. Numerous recordings explaining composer's lives and music to children are on the market. Yes, those composers were kids once, too!
Feel the beat
Feeling rhythm in music is very important.
First, find some music you like and find the steady beats within the music. Once you can find the steady beat, clap on beat 1, then 2, then 3, and then 4; or stomp with your foot on beat 1 and clap the others. Students will notice that the beats that are not clapped (stomped) will be felt inside.
Beat 1 may be hard at times for some to feel. A tip is to listen to the beginning of lyric phrases or maybe find the cymbal, tambourine, drum or some sort of musical accent that would indicate beat 1.
Try this on all types of music and enjoy feeling those beats.
New Beginning
Almost all young students will go back to the beginning of the piece if they make a mistake. This even happens if the mistake is in the last measure! What a waste of time.
1) Take a strip of paper or a Post-It-Note and adhere it to the music, covering the first line of the music.
2) Now the second line is the new beginning! Begin there. 3) The next time, stick the paper strip to the second line, making the third line the
new beginning.
You might even want to make another strip for the end, stick another strip over the last line. Practice what is left visible. What is missing? How does it sound that way? (Brain research has shown that we learn the most at the beginning and end of practice material. This way, we have strong learning at different points. Tricky!)
Stop/Prepare
This method helps you practice without getting too tense when confronted with tricky passages. You put in stops at certain points in the passage. For instance, if your piece has a section with running sixteenth notes, you could stop on the first sixteenth note of every beat. If you have a position change, you put in a stop before the shift--shift in a relaxed manner--then play on in tempo.
Inserting the stops makes you think in groups instead of single notes. The important thing is, your brain grapples from group to group instead of note to note, which makes things smoother and faster.
Sometimes I like to accent the first note after a stop for awhile.
Repeating Games
We all know that repetition is the mother of skill. But ‘blind’ mindless repeating will just be boring. Try the following games to spice up the chore.
Fishing
I found a cute toy that, when wound up, turned 'round and round' and the little fishes on it opened their mouths. I painted numbers on the fishes and the child went fishing using a little plastic rod with a magnet at the end of the line. The little fishes had magnets in their mouths and so the child caught one and read the number on the fish. That number was the amount of times the child was to repeat a certain section.
If I say, "Play this section five times”, the kids are never as enthusiastic as when they've ‘fished’ their number of repeats!
Dice it up!
Roll the dice to determine how many times a passage, a technical principal or a short piece should be played.
Kids love this game as there is always the chance of a ‘one’ to pop up. Don't tell - it rarely does! If so, just go right along with it. Tomorrow is another day.
Variation (Risk): This game is similar to the preceding one.
First, the child rolls the dice. Then he decides if he wants me to roll the dice. If I roll the dice, though, he must take the number I roll. That is his risk. (Most kids are so curious, they pick me!)
Fill in the Faces
Draw five circles on a piece of paper. Each time your child plays a passage, ask him or her how he or she felt while playing. Then have the child draw a face in the circle to express his or her feelings. In other words, how comfortable did he or she feel while playing?
At first, the faces are pretty desolate (if the passage is difficult). After about four times though, the faces start going from neutral to happy.
I never can resist mentioning how difficult the first time was: "Look at your first face. Pretty gloomy! If you had stopped after one time, you would never had gotten as good as you are now after only four-five repeats!
Abacus repeats
I have several abacus models in different sizes. They all have colourful beads.
Have your child pick out his or her favourite colour and have him or her repeat a passage as per beads of one colour (I have five beads of one colour per line). Let him move the beads to the other side after each repeat.
Variation - Abacus memorising: Use the abacus as above. After each repeat, ask him if he wants to try the passage from memory. Sometimes, the children have the passage memorised in no time as they want to have very few beads moved over before playing the passage from memory. Studies have shown the memory improves if the subject knows he'll be playing from memory in the next go-through.
Tremendous Tower
Build a tower with Duplos/Legos. Add a Duplo to the tower every time your child plays his ‘portion’ correctly, and when he reaches the top, put something nice on the top one. This can be a raisin, an M&M, a pretty sticker or a piece of fruit (like strawberry).
Or
Ask your child to build a model of something this week. You or your child might want a castle, or a truck, or something even more incredible! When do they build this impressing project? Every time they play through their piece (or practice a hard part), they get to add one piece to their model.
Variation 1- Christmas Rings: Around Christmas time, you can have the kids pick out pre-cut strips of coloured paper for each (correct or mistake-free) repeat.
They can paste the ends together to form a garland for the Xmas tree!
Variation 2 - Paperclip chain: Make a paperclip chain. For every repeat of a piece or part of a piece, give your child a paperclip. There are such colourful paperclips in the market today!
Take coloured ones (green means a perfect play through, red means less-than- perfect, etc) or giant ones. Odd-shaped ones will also do great.
You can also have a paperclip-chain-contest a week! The kids have to make one that is:
- as long as the piano stool
- as long as the piano
- half as long as the practice room
- as long as the practice room
If in the course of working with their props, they have several play-throughs in a row that go badly, please call ‘time out!’ and spend a few minutes targeting the difficult section.
Repeating imperfect playing could actually reinforce the problems.
Firing Squad
Now, don't get upset! I didn't necessarily mean violence here!
Have your child pick out five tiny toys or figurines and place them close. Each time he or she plays the passage correctly, keeps the thumbs over the keys, plays with the correct rhythm (pick out a difficulty)--he or she ‘saves’ one of the figures from being sent off to bed. (fooled you!); or put another way, the ‘Super Hero’ helps one figurine jump to another more delightful place.
In my lessons, this is on top of the treat container. These figurines get to stay and listen to the child play.
Sweet Repeat Treats
What if the teacher says to your child, "You have to practice more"? Hmm, you already play all your scales, arpeggios and assigned pieces once through every day, what more could she possibly want? How about five times through each day? It's worth a try.
Here's how to do it so that you don't lose count. First, you need some Gummy Bears, M&Ms or Jelly Beans. Five, to be exact. It's more interesting if they're in different colours. Of course, you can use coloured plastic buttons but they don't taste as good! Define them from least favourite colour to the most favourite colour.
Place these goodies on top of the piano or on a nearby table (on a small plate). Each time you play the piece or a difficult passage correctly, you move one of your Gummy Bears to the opposite side of the table or piano. Keep doing this until each Gummy Bear is on the opposite side. Then, do the same with your next piece. You can do this for scales too! When your practice time is up, you can gulp down the goodies! (If this game is a bit too sweet, use little Playmobil figures. Move them from one side of the table or piano to the other. After playing the allotted times, give one goody for the work.)
Variation: You can also give each colour a special purpose. Have you got your five different colours ready? Let's use the colours orange, yellow, green, red and blue.
Orange: The first time, the piece is played at a slug's pace and completely even. The concentration is directed to thinking about what note is on the page, where it is on the instrument and what the exact rhythm is. Mistakes should be avoided, even if this takes quite a while.
Yellow: The second time, either the rhythm or the note names should be spoken (while playing or just before).
Green: The child plays slowly and attentively. This time, he or she includes expression marks, like soft and loud, and is careful to bring these in the playing. Exaggerate a bit.
Red: Be especially attentive to the touch (articulation) and phrasing. Is the section legato, or staccato? Concentrate only on this aspect.
Blue: is the last one. (Use your child's favourite colour last because it represents his best performance.) This time, the child will be concentrating on all of the above at the same time! Tomorrow, he or she does the same thing. Using different colours, or different objects help to keep things interesting.
Blind Man's Bluff
Often students think that non-critical repetition automatically leads to improvement. They repeat and repeat without really knowing what is causing the difficulty in the first place. Repeating only cements the existing weak quality. Repeating passages that are relatively easy can lead to a more thorough knowledge. Repeating difficult parts doesn't necessarily make the passage easier and better.
Before each repeat, have your child say what he or she is aiming for by playing improved intonation (..."gotta get that third finger higher"), noticeable dynamic changes ("I want the listener to hear that crescendo in the fourth bar."), etc.
Remember: If you repeat mistakes a lot, you'll have a terrible time ‘repairing’ them! Teachers and trainers are quite aware of the power of repetition in the skill- building process. It simply reinforces what the student is already doing.
Please be constantly aware of what and why is being repeated.
From Cognitive Fitness, published in the Harvard Business Review: "Play engages the prefrontal cortex, feeding our highest cognitive functions...Play improves our ability to reason and to understand the world...Play can be a powerful tool for allowing people to develop creative capacity and cognitive health."
An important part of playing for young children is playing with parents, and there should be some time for this every day. A toy company some years ago asked a large number of five-year olds what they would like for Christmas, and their survey found that, rather than the new X-Box or Bratz doll, many children wanted more time with parents!
Practice Games
Why not? Even we adults enjoy learning in a joyful and amusing setting. The more you laugh, the more you retain!
Here are some fun techniques that will enrich the music learning process for all:
Story Time
Listen to different classical pieces and tell stories letting the mood of the music feed your fantasy. Numerous recordings explaining composer's lives and music to children are on the market. Yes, those composers were kids once, too!
Feel the beat
Feeling rhythm in music is very important.
First, find some music you like and find the steady beats within the music. Once you can find the steady beat, clap on beat 1, then 2, then 3, and then 4; or stomp with your foot on beat 1 and clap the others. Students will notice that the beats that are not clapped (stomped) will be felt inside.
Beat 1 may be hard at times for some to feel. A tip is to listen to the beginning of lyric phrases or maybe find the cymbal, tambourine, drum or some sort of musical accent that would indicate beat 1.
Try this on all types of music and enjoy feeling those beats.
New Beginning
Almost all young students will go back to the beginning of the piece if they make a mistake. This even happens if the mistake is in the last measure! What a waste of time.
1) Take a strip of paper or a Post-It-Note and adhere it to the music, covering the first line of the music.
2) Now the second line is the new beginning! Begin there. 3) The next time, stick the paper strip to the second line, making the third line the
new beginning.
You might even want to make another strip for the end, stick another strip over the last line. Practice what is left visible. What is missing? How does it sound that way? (Brain research has shown that we learn the most at the beginning and end of practice material. This way, we have strong learning at different points. Tricky!)
Stop/Prepare
This method helps you practice without getting too tense when confronted with tricky passages. You put in stops at certain points in the passage. For instance, if your piece has a section with running sixteenth notes, you could stop on the first sixteenth note of every beat. If you have a position change, you put in a stop before the shift--shift in a relaxed manner--then play on in tempo.
Inserting the stops makes you think in groups instead of single notes. The important thing is, your brain grapples from group to group instead of note to note, which makes things smoother and faster.
Sometimes I like to accent the first note after a stop for awhile.
Repeating Games
We all know that repetition is the mother of skill. But ‘blind’ mindless repeating will just be boring. Try the following games to spice up the chore.
Fishing
I found a cute toy that, when wound up, turned 'round and round' and the little fishes on it opened their mouths. I painted numbers on the fishes and the child went fishing using a little plastic rod with a magnet at the end of the line. The little fishes had magnets in their mouths and so the child caught one and read the number on the fish. That number was the amount of times the child was to repeat a certain section.
If I say, "Play this section five times”, the kids are never as enthusiastic as when they've ‘fished’ their number of repeats!
Dice it up!
Roll the dice to determine how many times a passage, a technical principal or a short piece should be played.
Kids love this game as there is always the chance of a ‘one’ to pop up. Don't tell - it rarely does! If so, just go right along with it. Tomorrow is another day.
Variation (Risk): This game is similar to the preceding one.
First, the child rolls the dice. Then he decides if he wants me to roll the dice. If I roll the dice, though, he must take the number I roll. That is his risk. (Most kids are so curious, they pick me!)
Fill in the Faces
Draw five circles on a piece of paper. Each time your child plays a passage, ask him or her how he or she felt while playing. Then have the child draw a face in the circle to express his or her feelings. In other words, how comfortable did he or she feel while playing?
At first, the faces are pretty desolate (if the passage is difficult). After about four times though, the faces start going from neutral to happy.
I never can resist mentioning how difficult the first time was: "Look at your first face. Pretty gloomy! If you had stopped after one time, you would never had gotten as good as you are now after only four-five repeats!
Abacus repeats
I have several abacus models in different sizes. They all have colourful beads.
Have your child pick out his or her favourite colour and have him or her repeat a passage as per beads of one colour (I have five beads of one colour per line). Let him move the beads to the other side after each repeat.
Variation - Abacus memorising: Use the abacus as above. After each repeat, ask him if he wants to try the passage from memory. Sometimes, the children have the passage memorised in no time as they want to have very few beads moved over before playing the passage from memory. Studies have shown the memory improves if the subject knows he'll be playing from memory in the next go-through.
Tremendous Tower
Build a tower with Duplos/Legos. Add a Duplo to the tower every time your child plays his ‘portion’ correctly, and when he reaches the top, put something nice on the top one. This can be a raisin, an M&M, a pretty sticker or a piece of fruit (like strawberry).
Or
Ask your child to build a model of something this week. You or your child might want a castle, or a truck, or something even more incredible! When do they build this impressing project? Every time they play through their piece (or practice a hard part), they get to add one piece to their model.
Variation 1- Christmas Rings: Around Christmas time, you can have the kids pick out pre-cut strips of coloured paper for each (correct or mistake-free) repeat.
They can paste the ends together to form a garland for the Xmas tree!
Variation 2 - Paperclip chain: Make a paperclip chain. For every repeat of a piece or part of a piece, give your child a paperclip. There are such colourful paperclips in the market today!
Take coloured ones (green means a perfect play through, red means less-than- perfect, etc) or giant ones. Odd-shaped ones will also do great.
You can also have a paperclip-chain-contest a week! The kids have to make one that is:
- as long as the piano stool
- as long as the piano
- half as long as the practice room
- as long as the practice room
If in the course of working with their props, they have several play-throughs in a row that go badly, please call ‘time out!’ and spend a few minutes targeting the difficult section.
Repeating imperfect playing could actually reinforce the problems.
Firing Squad
Now, don't get upset! I didn't necessarily mean violence here!
Have your child pick out five tiny toys or figurines and place them close. Each time he or she plays the passage correctly, keeps the thumbs over the keys, plays with the correct rhythm (pick out a difficulty)--he or she ‘saves’ one of the figures from being sent off to bed. (fooled you!); or put another way, the ‘Super Hero’ helps one figurine jump to another more delightful place.
In my lessons, this is on top of the treat container. These figurines get to stay and listen to the child play.
Sweet Repeat Treats
What if the teacher says to your child, "You have to practice more"? Hmm, you already play all your scales, arpeggios and assigned pieces once through every day, what more could she possibly want? How about five times through each day? It's worth a try.
Here's how to do it so that you don't lose count. First, you need some Gummy Bears, M&Ms or Jelly Beans. Five, to be exact. It's more interesting if they're in different colours. Of course, you can use coloured plastic buttons but they don't taste as good! Define them from least favourite colour to the most favourite colour.
Place these goodies on top of the piano or on a nearby table (on a small plate). Each time you play the piece or a difficult passage correctly, you move one of your Gummy Bears to the opposite side of the table or piano. Keep doing this until each Gummy Bear is on the opposite side. Then, do the same with your next piece. You can do this for scales too! When your practice time is up, you can gulp down the goodies! (If this game is a bit too sweet, use little Playmobil figures. Move them from one side of the table or piano to the other. After playing the allotted times, give one goody for the work.)
Variation: You can also give each colour a special purpose. Have you got your five different colours ready? Let's use the colours orange, yellow, green, red and blue.
Orange: The first time, the piece is played at a slug's pace and completely even. The concentration is directed to thinking about what note is on the page, where it is on the instrument and what the exact rhythm is. Mistakes should be avoided, even if this takes quite a while.
Yellow: The second time, either the rhythm or the note names should be spoken (while playing or just before).
Green: The child plays slowly and attentively. This time, he or she includes expression marks, like soft and loud, and is careful to bring these in the playing. Exaggerate a bit.
Red: Be especially attentive to the touch (articulation) and phrasing. Is the section legato, or staccato? Concentrate only on this aspect.
Blue: is the last one. (Use your child's favourite colour last because it represents his best performance.) This time, the child will be concentrating on all of the above at the same time! Tomorrow, he or she does the same thing. Using different colours, or different objects help to keep things interesting.
Blind Man's Bluff
Often students think that non-critical repetition automatically leads to improvement. They repeat and repeat without really knowing what is causing the difficulty in the first place. Repeating only cements the existing weak quality. Repeating passages that are relatively easy can lead to a more thorough knowledge. Repeating difficult parts doesn't necessarily make the passage easier and better.
Before each repeat, have your child say what he or she is aiming for by playing improved intonation (..."gotta get that third finger higher"), noticeable dynamic changes ("I want the listener to hear that crescendo in the fourth bar."), etc.
Remember: If you repeat mistakes a lot, you'll have a terrible time ‘repairing’ them! Teachers and trainers are quite aware of the power of repetition in the skill- building process. It simply reinforces what the student is already doing.
Please be constantly aware of what and why is being repeated.
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