Hey Friend,
I was giving some enthusiastic and busy cute 4-5 year old students their first ever violin lesson today and despite me being experienced and thoroughly prepared, as usual there was a lot for me to learn! I thought I would share my findings with you here today... Sharing is caring right?!
Explain your expectations to your students before your students enter the room, using direct, shortened and simple commands. (Forgot this with one group and they bounded in and started to wonder around the room touching things! Eek) This age have amazing imaginations. They preferred to listen and concentrate when my dinosaur puppet head was talking to them like in a puppet show! Any puppet or toy will do the trick. They honestly will do anything Stringosaurus asks them to do! Ha ha ha I followed their lead where I could. As they are still so young, it was important for me to include a mixture of teaching styles, not relying on direct teaching. When they first picked up their violins (I had cheekily hidden their bows out of sight ha ha ha), they started strumming them like guitars. That was the perfect opportunity for them to learn that their instruments are delicate and can break easily. We talked about how the bridge holds up the strings and can come out. We all strummed happily and gently together and I strummed chords. We practiced the art of starting together and stopping together. I found my hidden bows and we took it in turns to try bowing under supervision ;) The students also loved to feel a broken bow's horse hair that I had put aside. We discussed how it feels and how it strokes/pulls on the string. Great chance for us to say again how delicate the bows are and how we can't touch the hair. We practiced stroking a dog soft toy (bought from Ikea) and I told the children that's kind of how we stroke the violin with the bow hair and what I noticed was how tight the students were when they were thinking about stroking the dog. With some of my other students who were just given the dog to stroke, they were looser and less inhibited. Interesting isn't it?!!
Let me know if any of these insights ressonated with you? Just hit reply, I LOVE to hear from you.
Warmest regards,
Laura :) x | 
