More tips for making piano practice fun

It occurred to me the other day, that, more than any other aspect of helping my child, the one thing I put the most time and effort into is making his practice sessions at best enjoyable and at worst bearable. For example, over the years I've collected various bright and interesting containers to keep cards, stickers and labels in. This is the first one we started with:

In the top drawer there are laminated cards with 'phrase 1, phrase 2' etc written on them. These are to help him learn songs piece by piece, breaking them down into manageable sections and making the process less overwhelming. His piano teacher informs me that this is a good skill to have: to be able to play a part of a song rather than starting from the beginning and working all the way through. This means that they can focus on just a segment of it at a time. But another advantage is that at those times when your child is feeling like it's all just too difficult, you can say: we'll just look at phrase(s) x today. Of course, yet another advantage is that you introduce an element of fun and interest by presenting them as a lucky dip.

Ah the lucky dip! Suzuki method understands the child's mind so well sometimes. Children want to play, they don't want to learn - or if they do want to learn, they want it to be fun. The times my little boy's motivation and interest has been brought back on track by the anticipation of what he's going to pull out of the lucky dip, I don't care to count. Is it going to be the one he likes, or the one he dreads? The easy one or the difficult one? Even the times that I've been tired, bored and stressed and I've been saying 'Come on, just choose one. It doesn't matter. You've got to do them all in the end anyway' (shame on me!) my son will still insist on making a big deal of which one he chooses, turning it over carefully to reveal............! He understands how interesting it is to anticipate what one he's going to pick, even if my sad adult mind loses track sometimes.

Some more lucky dip containers:

As you can see, they're ex-chocolate containers. One has laminated practice points in it and the other has all the scales that he currently knows (some better than others it has to be said).

If you look back to the first image of the mini-chest of drawers, you can see some lolly sticks in the middle drawer and some picture cards in the bottom one. The lolly sticks each have a song my son knows written on it. The picture cards are a legacy from when he was learning songs but couldn't read. He learned to associate the picture with the song. Some are quite obvious; for example, you can see a picture of a lamb, which represents Mary Had a Little Lamb. Others are less so, such as the picture of piano notes that stands for Suzuki's Allegro. It doesn't really matter what the picture is because the child will make the connection.

You may also be able to make out written on the picture of a lamb the words 'Balance Winner 2010'. This is the result of a competition the songs had last year as to which one could be played with the best balance in the hands. This is a good example of two more ways to make practice more enjoyable. The first is taking the focus off the child. My son's piano teacher is very good at doing this with young children. She will talk to their hands as if they were separate personalities from the child. Not only is this amusing for children, it also absolves them of any responsibility if things don't go well. It's their hands fault, not theirs. Silly hands! So the Balance Competition we held was between the songs, and not implicating my son's ability to play the songs.

The second way in which the competition makes practice more enjoyable is that it, as with the lucky dip, adds an element of interest and suspense. My son loves these competitions. I have to say that he isn't always the best judge when it comes to awarding merit, but he's interested and involved in his practice, and that's so important when you're asking a child to focus and repeat similar exercises day after day. Other things I do include writing down a guess as to which order he will play his Twinkles in, which he then checks to see if I was correct. He's usually extremely pleased to find that I was wrong! Or when he puts a sticker on his practice sheet, I'll close my eyes and guess which one it is. As an adult, it's quite marvellous sometimes to observe how important these little games are to him.

All kinds of surprising little things can spark a child's interest. Here are the gloves my son uses to play glissandos (sliding his fingers over the keys). He loves these gloves:

Of course, these are just things that have worked for us. Each child is different and what works for my son may be meaningless to another child. I think that's one of the greatest benefits I've experienced in going through this process: I've learned so much about my child and what makes him tick. We've also grown close through sharing the lows and highs of his endeavours. My ambition has never been that my child become a concert pianist, only that he does something that is really beneficial to his development both physically and emotionally, but along the way we've both reaped many other rewards.