Something’s working

Monday: At breakfast, I mentioned that we’d skip our morning practice and just practice in the evening. I said something like, “I hope it goes well” or “I think it will go well.” After a pause, M said:

I’m starting to like it.

I put out my hand so she could slap me five. I refrained from tap dancing.

In the evening, we had  a good practice for about 1/2 an hour. I proposed to let M earn pennies, nickels, and dimes during her lesson since her teacher is collecting change for Japan. When M was dawdling about going to the practice room, I said, “If you get there right now, you can have a whole dime.”

She jumped up, scurried to our practice room, and was standing there holding her guitar, grinning and ready to bow when I walked in. A dime well spent! (Later, she asked her mom, “Did you see how fast I got ready to practice tonight? I was like—” and then she demonstrated.)

We did three things in our lesson:

  • Worked on the song in Read This First. We went over the first line of the sheet music without the instrument, identifying how she would play each note (finger/string/fret), then we played. We made it through the whole thing with very few problems.
    • She had some difficulty transitioning from the second to third line—a transition that involves moving from the 3rd to 4th string—so we worked extra on that.
    • We played it all through once. She declined when I asked if she wanted to play it as a round. I wasn’t crazy about this, but I asked, so I had to take her answer.
  • Asked M to tell me the notes to French Folk Song, then to conduct and say the note names while I played.
  • Asked M to play French Folk Song. Some small sections were rusty.

It was an excellent practice, and M was entirely cooperative. Yay!

One thought on “Something’s working”

  1. Hello Suzuki Dad. My wife Maggie was on Google for Benjamin Garcia and she saw your Children’s Guitar page. Thank you for the shout out. I am adding it to my favorites. Well done!

    We are hosting the Austin Suzuki Guitar Institute from July 5th to July 10th. Here is the link if you want to post it under the Suzuki Links
    http://www.behrensguitarstudio.com/austin_suzuki_guitar_institute

    We are travelling to Colorado for all of next week and then we will be back in Austin.

    Keep up the good work

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