Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Tips For Summer Piano Lessons

The Ice-Cream Contest is coming along. Some students do not like contests where they are compared against others but there is ice-cream for anyone who participates, I hope I was clear about that. 
H. gets her second scoop of ice-cream
Writing down the number of minutes you practice is a way of staying in touch with your assignment book and staying focused on the plan. If the assignment book is not making it to lessons you will likely see book marks on the pages assigned. It would be a good idea to page to those songs and see if you have heard them during the week. My blogging colleague Laura Lowe makes a great point in her recent post about piano teaching. 

"Reading the assignments helps you know whether your child is organizing his practice time to cover all of the assignments or spending all of his piano time on one piece, or maybe even playing things that weren't assigned. One of the most frequent things I hear from students is, "Oh, I forgot that I was supposed to work on that piece," or learn that scale or study those terms and symbols, even though I had written the assignment in the notebook. We end up repeating part of the lesson from the week before, and this is not a good use of your investment in piano study! "

Playing music other than assigned pieces is wonderful, but make sure the assignment for the week is accomplished so that progress is steady.

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