Well, lets just say that we are not always following Dr. Suzuki’s advice of “Practice only on the days you eat”… lol. Although we did go about 450 days in a row (excluding sick days) quite a while ago….
My 7yo (Delta) has just finished his 4th year of lessons… My 5yo (Echo) has just finished her 2nd official year of lessons (and 1 year before with me teaching her…) and the 3yo (Foxtrot) has been doing some basic exercises with me for a while….
I have to say that some of the noises that can come out of the violin are not very musical! lol.
It takes a while just to learn how to hold the violin (it is held between the sholder and chin without hands… the left hand does NOT hold the violin… it needs to be able to move!) It also takes a while to learn how to hold the bow… they start by making “bow bunnies” which is making a “specific” bunny shape with their bow hand. Then the bunny “eats” a “carrot” It is all learned small step at a time.
Delta can now play from memory… 17 suzuki songs (counting the 6 variations of Twinkle as 1), 5 Fiddle Songs, and a few other random ones like Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells. He will be playing a song this fall at the church primary presentation. He is learning to read music and is doing well at that too, although he can’t read as complicated of songs as he can play at this point
Echo can play 9 Suzuki songs from memory (again counting the 6 Twinkles as 1), 3 Fiddle Songs, and knows part of Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells.
Foxtrot can do a bow, find playing feet position, hold the violin properly for the length of a whole twinkle, Hold the bow properly (sometimes), clap the first twinkle rhythm, place the bow on the A string without making a sound, sort-of play the first rhythm on open A (needs work!), name all the strings, and point to the various violin parts as I name them, handle the bow for various exercises (done to songs like “up like a rocket” and “Wheels on the bus”) and is learning how to put the violin on her sholder herself. (This all has taken a while! lol!)
Oh, and Golf (almost 1) generally stops crying if the kids play or sing Twinkle to her…
Oh, and don’t forget the listening we (I) do… listen to the CD each day (well 2 now… book 1 and book 2), listen to them review their songs, and then also practice. Because there are 6 variations of Twinkle… you get Twinkle in your head sometimes! Oh, and often I put on the just learned songs for each of them, and the song in process, and sometimes the next songs too on random and repeat for a while in the day…. Sometimes we listen to the book 3 songs too. (We actually started unofficially doing Suzuki Piano at home, before I decided our Piano needed too much work) Can you guess why we don’t do Composer Study at this time yet???
My sister did Suzuki when she was a kid, and although I was younger than her, and missed most of her violin years (she quit when she was 12… was out of Suzuki and with a different instructor after age 7 or 8)… I found when we started Suzuki with the kids that I “knew” all the songs!
Probably more than you wanted to know… but you have a proud mommy here…