It's Summer! Should We Practice?

The glorious days of summer are just around the corner.  It's time for swimming and camping and vacationing! How does piano practice fit into it all? As you decide how to help your student prepare for 3rd year, you have a spectrum of choices for handling summertime practice.  From the structure of daily practice to the ease of taking a serious long-term break, you can make a plan that fits your family's needs.

Option 1: Stick with Daily Practice
If your family has a groove going with practice and you would love to maintain daily practice and progress during the summer, you'll love having more of the structured practice and theory assignments that you've come to love.  Let's Play Music teacher, Jen Ellsworth, in St. Clair, Pennsylvania has put together a six-week summer practice program to help any student get bolstered for Purple Magic this fall.

If you had a Yellow Arrows student that was less than confident with all of the repertoire learned this year, a summertime of continued (or improved?) practice can make a huge difference!  Three months is a long time for young minds and fingers; often, struggling students can  turn things around and enter Purple class full of confidence.

Option 2: Get Some Help
You love the idea of the first option: daily practice.  BUT, perhaps you know that your child (and yourself) are just not going to be motivated to get the practice done five times each week when you know that there is no fun weekly lesson waiting for you.  Don't despair!

If you are especially lucky, your Let's Play Music teacher might have time for a few private lessons in the summer.  Between her travels and yours, that might mean only 4 or 6 lessons, which is often plenty for a summer.

If your LPM teacher isn't teaching privates, summer could be a great time to start looking for the piano teacher you'll graduate to in one short year.  Check out our guide for interviewing piano teachers.  Explain that you'd like someone to help your child over the summer, you have a curriculum you'd like to follow (from above), and if all goes well you'll be back in a year to start up full time.

Many private teachers are looking to fill summer vacancies and will be happy to work with you, and you'll be happy to have a few weeks to test the relationship before signing on long-term next year.  Some teachers have a wait-list for taking permanent students; if you like this teacher, put your name down now for next year.



Option 3: Go To Disneyland!

Go to the family reunion.  Go camping.  Send the kids to a week of camp.  Do you feel like you are in and out all summer?  The summer packet has only SIX weeks of assignments, so it is expected that you'll be busy for a few weeks and just pick up when you get back.  

If you decide to try private lessons, you'll be relieved to know that students who attended as few as FOUR summertime private music lessons showed improvement and retained Yellow Arrow skills.  Practice the weeks you're in town, and don't worry about the rest.  


Option 4: Take A Long Break

Perhaps your child is wanting some freedom to choose what she plays, and wishing to practice as a recreational activity this summer.  Even if there are no formal practice sessions, we hope your child is starting to love making music and will go to the piano on her own (or with gentle suggestion) sometimes for fun and creation.  

As fall starts to approach, check in with your child to be sure she can still play the basic skills learned in Yellow Arrows and use our guide for crafting your own practice plan to refresh skills before class starts.

When your musician attends the first few weeks of Purple Magic, she'll feel happy and confident having mastered her chords, hand positions, and scales.  She'll be ready for the new fun skills and repertoire to come!

- Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher

Back-to-School Piano Refresher

Let's Play Music classes are starting up soon!  If your child has already completed year two (Yellow Arrows), a few weeks of brush-up practice can really help your youngster get back in the groove for the upcoming purple semester.

The Student Helps Decide

Just as we suggest for the school-year, chat with your child about practicing and have him be part of the decision-making.  Which days will we be in town to practice?  What time of day will we practice?  How many days will we practice (perhaps 5/week).  Make a chart to keep track of each week.  Your child might want to draw a simple 5 shapes to color in, or you might want to make a table or use any variety of printable charts.

Why are We Doing This?

Talk up the joys of returning to class.  "You learned so many great things last year, I really want your fingers to remember what they could do, so you can learn some new fun things!"

Be understanding of your child's feelings.  "Remember how last year it took a while to learn the chords, and was really tricky.  It might feel tricky at first because we haven't practiced for a few weeks, but I'm so excited for you to have fun playing these songs again."

Help him remember his favorite things from class. "I remember how much fun you had playing this song last Spring.  Let's practice it a few times so it can be fun again.  Your teacher is going to be so surprised to see that you're even better at this than you were last Spring!"

Design Your Practice

Even without a weekly assignment from your teacher, you can put together a nice practice routine with these guidelines.  Once you decide what you'll work on (let your child have some input as to what he thinks needs work), write it out on his chart so your he knows the assignment.  Choose one item from each category each week. 

• Warm up each day with a review of the Red, Yellow, and Blue chords.  Use "Primary Cadence"; choose block, marching, or broken style.  Or play the "Primary Chords Song".  Or practice shifting between 2 chords (red, blue, red, blue, red).  If each hand is perfect, move to hands together.

• Work on technique, focusing on curved bubble-fingers and individual finger control.  Play "The Caterpillar Song", "Do Re Mi" (remember the pops?), "Bug Scale", or "Scale in and Out"

• Polish up some repertoire with chording.  Although some of these songs are written for right hand, your child should try it with left hand instead, or both hands if each is perfect.  Use "Love Somebody", "Lullaby and Goodnight", "Tingalayo", or "When the Saints Go Marching In." Several Green Songbook songs would be fun, too.

• Polish up some repertoire with two hands.  Remember to start by playing only one hand (Mom, you get to play the other hand for a nice duet.)  Then get back into playing hands together.  Use "I'm an Indian", "How to Skip", "Practice Everyday" or "Hickory Dickory Dock."

• Learn something new. Be adventurous! Try learning the melody with right hand to Green songbook songs like "Hurry, Hurry, Drive the Firetruck", "Halloween is coming",  "Johnny's Hammers", or Yellow Songbook songs like "Love Somebody." Although the notes are printed small, your child (with a little bit of help) can figure out the melodies to almost all of our songs, remembering to take it slow and look at steps, skips, and intervals.  Mom, you can play the accompaniment for a duet, and if your child learns the right hand really well, learn both hands to WOW your teacher!

Be There. Have Fun

Now that you have a practice chart and a list of things to work on, be there with your child as he gets back into the practicing groove.  Cheer for all the bits he remembers well, and take it slow on the bits he has forgotten.  Focus on having fun (sing! be silly! be surprised! play your duet! play along with the CD!) and remember that a few giggles with your child will buy mounds more success than approaching the new semester with tears or fears.  See you soon!

-Gina Weibel, MS
Let's Play Music Teacher