Holiday piano times

Many music teachers who teach children don't offer lessons during the school holidays, and for us this brings its difficulties and its pleasures. I'm not the most confident Suzuki parent so continuing practice times without a teacher's assessment of progress and her guidance tends to leave me worrying that I'm doing everything wrong. On the other hand we are also less constrained by the teacher's direction on what should be done.

Holidays bring a relaxing of tight schedules and an element of  freedom over the direction that practice takes. I try to reassure myself that even if I fail to spot errors or take my son down the wrong path, the teacher can always correct my mistakes when lessons recommence. I don't have to be perfect!

We have reincorporated a listening task/game that we used to do when my son first started to play. His teacher calls it note hunt. In its original form, the child chooses a particular note, say for example C. Then he or she turns their back and the parent plays a C. The child then has to guess which C it was. The reward can be a decreasing number of points according to how many guesses the child needs, or gold, silver or bronze medals (imaginary!). Three tries is normally sufficient.

My son loved playing this game and awarded himself increasing numbers of points, trying to beat previous scores. (Basically, anythng that temotely resembles a computer game is a major motivator for him.) Of course, the idea is that it helps the child learn to concentrate on differentiating between the notes. My son ended up giving himself millions of points for a first time correct guess.

Just recently we've been playing a slightly different version where he chooses any key and he has to guess which note I've  played in that key in a particular octave. We're doing this because at the moment he's learning the different scales. As always, his knowledge is greater than mine and he has to show me which notes are played in that key in the first place, but we manage. In fact, I think he takes pride in the fact that he knows the keys better than me.

So, we're currently enjoying this opportunity to our own thing for a little while.