How to Help Your Child Develop Effective Practice Habits
Effective, daily practice is crucial for your child to make progress. Children aren't born with practice skills, nor are they developed overnight. Excellent practice skills take years to develop and must be taught. Parental involvement is necessary for children 10 years and younger, especially in the first few years of study. These are a few ideas you can use to help you child develop practice skills.
Choose the same time of day for practice, a time when your child has the most energy and focus. Try practicing first thing in the morning after breakfast, and either right before or after dinner. Practice has to become as habitual as brushing your teeth or getting out of bed.
Make daily practice a priority, an appointment that cannot be broken.
Provide an environment with enough lighting and as few distractions as possible and a well-tuned instrument. An acoustic piano should be tuned twice a year in order to keep it in tune. Allow your child to practice in short sessions, 10-15 minutes at a time, 2-3 times a day. This is just a guideline, not an absolute amount. I want your child to focus on goals, rather than time spent at the piano. A student taking a 45-minute lessons should practice at least 45-minutes a day. A student taking a 30-minute lesson should practice 30 minutes a day.
Help your child set a goal for each practice session. I usually give each student a weekly goal and it is up to the student to determine how much time is needed at the piano to reach that goal. For example, if I ask your child to learn a piece that is 10 lines long by the next lesson, a good goal would be to learn 2 lines of music per day. It is best to spend the majority of the practice session working on small sections of each piece and then playing the whole piece once mastering each section. If your child can accomplish his weekly goal in less time than I suggest, that's great!
Plan each practice session with your child – Decide which pieces you are going to work on and what problems you would like to solve. Start each practice session with a different piece so that all pieces are practiced during the week. Supervise your child's practice sessions. Sit next to your child and make sure he practices each piece that is assigned during at least 3 practice sessions during the week. It is not absolutely necessary to practice every piece every day. The assignments are written weekly in the practice book that I gave each student. Record your child's practice at the beginning and end of each week to monitor progress. If you can't sit with your child during a practice session, try to be in the room to listen attentively. Sometimes your presence is all a child needs.
Gently remind your child to practice every day if needed. Stress the importance of daily practice. Just like soccer , football or any other kind sport, you must practice the piano to improve. Playing an instrument involves fine motor skills that aren't required in other activities, so daily practice is essential. If your child wants improve as a pianist, then he or she must practice regularly.
Encourage your child when he practices consistently.
Provide performance opportunities for your child. Line up his favorite stuffed animals as an audience, friends, relatives or family members
Ask your child to teach you There is no better way to enforce a concept than to teach it to someone else.
The following things do not work: Yelling at your child, using practice as punishment, comparing your child's progress to someone else's, criticizing your child without also praising his strengths.
