Witches Dance

My 6-year-old is a great player by ear.  You can ask her to play just about any song and she can figure it out.  It cracks me up when she starts playing Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga.

This can, however, be difficult sometimes when it comes to polishing pieces.  With Witches Dance in Suzuki Book 2 we went over the tough fingering sections one week and then one day she just played the whole piece - with a lot of "blips!"  I thought this might go away after practicing it, but she still can't seem to play through the whole piece without fumbling up her fingers.  She's never really taught her hand how to play - she just plays it by ear still.

So, we need to do more overs and overs.  I created this chart for Witches Dance.  The piece basically has four different sections (the BOO!, twirling witches, scary witch, and the ending) and she needs to play each section 5 times to fill in a circle.  There might be some sort of reward for finishing the chart - but maybe not.  It's just motivating us to concentrate on smart practicing.

Today we spent a good 15 minutes just on this piece.  It improved SOOOO much and she was even having fun.  I used a bead counter to count each 5 times and then she'd fill in another circle and choose which section to play next.  She was skipping around and ended up playing each section at least 10 times.  In the end, I told her to play the piece through again and she only did one little "blip."  It'll be extraordinary after we finish this chart!  

I can't wait!
(Find this chart here)