The word of the day is: Consistency

"Repetition is the heart of learning"- Dr. Suzuki. 

What instrument are we learning to play?
We are learning to play the Piano, we started with violin originally but after a year we decided to just have piano as our main instrument.

Where are we in the Suzuki program?
We are currently in book 1, and working on the Cuckoo song with both hands playing: Left hand the patterns, Right hand the melody. I have to say that we started working on this since January 2011 and big A is just nailing it now. However, I want to add that this past winter was a bit rough on us, we had rotating colds for every month of the year and unfortunately we had to miss several lessons.

That been said, I honestly believe that he made a HUGE progress just right before his recital this May when we started practicing EVERY DAY. That's right, we didn't use to practice every day, we sometimes had productive weeks and sometimes we just had not the time nor the energy to practice (did I mention we were sick most of the winter with a rotating cold?).
But when I noticed how much it paid off after we practiced every single day for 2 weeks, my eyes were opened. CONSISTENCY. I know I talked about this in my previous post, but here is where I make sense of the word of the day: Keep it consistent.

Now, what stopped me before from being consistent?, we have been taking lessons for a while, right?. Honestly I am not quite sure . But I can list a number of factors:

- Lack of information on resources on how to make a music practice appealing to a toddler/preschooler.
- Lack of previously organized materials/ideas on what to do at our at-home practice. So I do not have to spend one hour planning for what are we going to do today.
- I am sure that the age has made a big difference in big A, as now he is 6 years old and understand what is expected from him, has a longer attention span and can take challenges with a more mature approach.
- Since he has been showing such progress, our home practices had turned FUN for me too! Can you believe it?, yes, I was also bored sometimes when we had to practice, I admit it. But now is just like we have a play date at the piano :).
- Lack of consistency, and this sounds redundant but is actually a true case that you stop flowing as you stop practicing every day. You loose momentum.

And if you think about it, Consistency is such an important thing in life, you can apply it to your life as a parent or setting a different goal for your children.

How do we measure Consistency?

This was a breakthrough for us.
How do I show to my 6 year old how far have we come in our daily practice and why is important to keep going?
Kids have a different notion of time, and is hard for them to see the big picture, so how do I keep him motivated when he is not seeing rewards on a daily basis?
My solution: Charts. Sounds simple and not very innovative, but has worked for us so far. He loves big numbers, 100, 1000, 10000, etc. So we started with a chart that our teacher provided called 'Hundreds Club' , if you are not familiar with this chart you should ask your teacher (if you think this would help your child).

So how does it work? Basically you get a blank chart diamond shaped with 100 little squares that your child has to color for every time he/she practices a song. You must pick a piece and stick to it for 100 times. There is not 'expiration date' to this chart, you do not need to turn it in by certain date. You can do your 100 practices in one day or in a week, or in a month or in a year, is up to you and your child. Then when all the 100 squares are colored you take the chart back to your teacher and sign your name (the child) in a special poster for the "Hundreds Club" in the teacher's studio. Now your child is a proud member of this special Club :). And everyone can see it!

Our first "Hundreds Club" chart.

But knowing my own child, I had to come up with a plan to not overwhelm him with the number 100, but not take it so easy that it will seem like forever when we reach our goal

So I showed him that if we practice our piece five times every day, in 20 days we would have reached our goal. And he agreed to it! I can proudly tell you that by the end of this week we will complete our goal and we are so excited to show our colorful chart to our teacher next week when we go back to our class!


Thanks for reading, and until the next time!---Pictures coming soon!!---