Making practice fun

Of course, one of the best ways to encourage your child to practice is to ensure they really enjoy it. Yet what child enjoys doing similar things in similar ways day after day? Okay, some children do enjoy this. However, most children easily become bored by repeated activities - unless, of course, they are playing. After all, that is what children do best. So how can we make practice fun? By making it seem like playing.

To do this well you need to think about your child's likes and dislikes. Each child is different and what will appeal to some won't appeal to others. What are your child's favourite characters? Do they like competitions, or puzzles, or stories? Do they like listening, or looking, or doing?

Here are some ideas of things I do or have done with my son to make his practice time more fun.

Practice sheets
We always sit together and work out a new practice sheet every 8 weeks or so. My son chooses the pictures he wants to decorate it with from the internet, and I print off colour copies. Ours are divided into days with separate boxes for different parts of practice. When he completes an activity he puts a little sticker in the box (also chosen by him).

Take a chance
It's fun to introduce an element of risk into piano practice. Of course, nothing life-threatening, but something to take out predictability is good. One thing my son's teacher always advocates (and I think this is standard Suzuki practice) is a lucky dip. It could be for the songs the child knows, the scales they know, or the tasks for that session. Putting them on strips of paper in a bag will have most children in eager speculation about what they will pull out. Will it be the thing they most want to do or the one they weren't looking forward to?

Another thing we do is to roll a dice to decide how often my son should repeat a practice. Say, for example, we've decided that the last two bars of a song need polishing. Rather than me telling him to practise it four times, we'll roll a dice. Sometimes it'll be more than four, sometimes less. Whatever it is, there will be that little bit of excitement and anticipation to spice the lesson up.

Invite a friend
I don't mean a real one (far too distracting!), but a toy figure or puppet or picture to join in and to offer their opinion on what's happening. My son once made me a lovely Mother's Day gift at school of a sunflower head on a stick with some 'I love you' type messages on it. At one point this became part of the practice routine. When my son was playing really beautifully, being very careful and thoughtful about what he was doing, the sunflower would miraculously appear over the piano and start waving about. If his concentration lapsed, the sunflower would start to sink sadly out of sight. Of course, he would sometimes play badly just to control the sunflower, but more often than not he wanted to make it grow.

Have a race
This was an idea suggested by a Suzuki violin teacher and this worked for us. We got two cars and started them at one side of the piano. One was my son's car and one Mum's car. Whenever my son completed a task well, he moved up and Mum's car lagged. If there was something not quite right, Mum's car got to go ahead. Needless to say, I never won! As time went by, more and more obstacles and rules were added to the car race. We really had a great time with this one.

Tell a story
This was another suggestion from the Suzuki teacher I heard talk once. He suggested drawing a path on a small whiteboard, with the different practice tasks represented as obstacles or encounters along the path. Then a figure such as a dragon or a princess has to journey along to their destination (a cave or a castle for example).


There are probably many more ideas you can think of for incorporating the things your child likes or likes doing. I hope this has given you some ideas.