I'm a Little Monkey Chart

I was going through some old pictures and found this one of my students, Gavin.  It reminded me of my favorite pre-twinkle chart.  I posted about it a while back, but I wanted to rehash it because it's such a great idea!

First of all, I give my students LOTS of these charts - like 10 or 20.  They cut it up into strips and mark off a monkey every time they play I'm a Little Monkey.  When they are done with a strip they tape it to another strip to make a really long ladder.  I love this because it gives the student a visual goal of what to work on and a fun visual reward when it's done.  Here is my daughter after she finished her chart:

Find this and lots of other printable charts and ideas at The Practice Shoppe.  

Multi-Mouse Making Our Practicing Fun!

This past weekend I had the fun opportunity to attend the ASTA Conference in my hometown.  I met a lot of great people who stopped by my Shoppe as well as others who were selling their own products.  One such product I invested in is the Rockin Rosin which is so fun to give away to my students.  They love rosining their bow with a fun-shaped rosin!

My biggest find, however, was a cute little mouse slap bracelet called the Multi-Mouse.  We call him Mr. Mouse over here and he's been a constant tool in our practicing this week.  I think this is a great little toy that can be used in a variety of ways from the smallest little pre-twinklers to the older students learning shifting and vibrato.

According to the creator, the multi-mouse has many wonderful uses:

1. Bowing arm path

2. Left wrist position

3. Left-hand shape

4. Introduce Shifting

5. Vibrato Technique

 I decided to test this out with my own kids and here are some of the pictures!

What really intrigued me was using this to help keep my daughter's wrist open when she plays.  She often plays with a "pancake hand" and I'm constantly reminding her to open her wrist.  Mr. Mouse is a fun way to practice with an open wrist.  What I've also noticed this week is that because she's not collapsing her wrist her low 2s are MUCH better in tune!

Mr. Mouse sits on the chair and waits his turn.

Even my 2-year-old who is doing pre-twinkle exercises is having fun with Mr. Mouse.

I thought it might give you a better idea of how I use this little guy if you saw him in action!

Here's a link to the video that the creator, Sharon, put together.

P,s, thanks to my 2-year-old, 5-year-old and 8-year-old for demonstrating in the video!

A Slightly Longer Practice

I'm amazed at how my 3-year-old's attention span is increasing.  It can sometimes be hard for a new parent practicing with their young child to imagine the future with their child practicing for 15, 20, or even a half hour.  At first, practicing is really just about 5 minutes.

I mentioned a while ago that my darling daughter was practicing 10 things a day. That's it!  We would flip a bead on our 10-bead counter for every little song she played.  She only had about 5 little pre-twinkle pieces in her repertoire so we'd play them an average of two times per day, but some days some would be played more and some less.  At the time I remember thinking, "I'm only having her play everything twice?  That doesn't seem like enough, but she won't stand still any longer."

Now that we're working on Twinkle we've upgraded to the DOUBLE bead counter - 20 beads.  She now plays 20 things during her practice and the goal is to get AT LEAST 3 full Twinkles in, but I hope to get as many as 5.  She is still so little (3 years and 8 months) and doesn't like to play the whole Twinkle song too many times because it's so long.  She does great at breaking it apart into sections.  She also reviews all of her pretwinkle songs, is starting the "bread song" on all the other rhythms, and is now learning the notes with flashcards - we're working on open strings right now.

She's basically in charge of her own practicing and she always gets it done because she gets a piece of gum after she practices every day if she finishes the entire bead counter.

We are working on a 100 chart for Twinkle Variation A.  I will also start a 100 chart for Twinkle Theme when she learns it.  After she completes those charts and can play through all the twinkles with the piano she'll earn her Twinkle Trophy!  I'll be sure to post about that when it happens!








The double-bead counters are made to order.  If you would like to order one you can e-mail me at leslie@thepracticeshoppe.com.  You can look at the website: www.thepracticeshoppe.com and look at all the choices of bead counters.  

Practicing I'm a Little Monkey!

My darling daughter just finished her I'm a Little Monkey chart.  I'm a Little Monkey is a pretty standard pre-twinkle song with Suzuki.  It paves the way to learning Twinkle and requires lots and lots of playing.  My girl's other teacher, Ramona Stirling, uses this chart and I like that it's unique and different from the typical chart.

First of all, I print 5 copies of this chart.  This makes 90 repetitions.

We then cut the chart and tape it together to make a giant ladder.  Each day she would average about 5 Monkey songs and we would put stickers on the chart at the end of her practice.  

 After a few weeks, we finished the chart and she got a prize....such an exciting day for her.  We've taped it on the wall for everyone to see.  It's been a great accomplishment for her.  Now she is ready to learn the basics of Twinkle!

You can download this chart at The Practice Shoppe.

Pre-Twinkle Practice

This is how we are practicing this week with my darling 3-year-old!  For the last two months, she's been a happy practicer, begging me several times a day to practice.  This week we experienced the first moments of resistance.  I'm pretty sure one of the problems may be because I was frustrated one day and snapped at her during practice.  I regret it and have tried to stop practicing before I get upset.  It doesn't happen often, but when the baby is crying and I have lots to do and she's rolling around on the floor or has a bad case of practicitis (I'm thirsty, my cheek itches, my foot hurts, look at my owie) I tend to get frustrated.

This, in conjunction with actually having to play her violin more than sit, is causing a few groans around our house.  Back to my good ol' bead counter.  She knows 6 pre-twinkle songs and I've told her that after she plays 10 songs she can have a piece of candy.  She's still restless and doesn't stand for that long so in-between songs we do bow games, sing songs, practice our rhythms, etc.  I let her choose which pieces she plays.  Today she played "All the Pretty Flowers" six times and each of the other songs once.  Sometimes it's spread out more equally.

Here are the songs we practice:

Eek the Ants
Pop goes the Weasel
Dirty Doggy Scrub Scrub
Elephants and Ants
Little Mice
All the Pretty Flowers

I have a handout with all my Pretwinkle songs that I'm working on.  Hopefully, I'll have it online soon!!