Review is good for a lot of things! Children enjoy playing something they know that they can do well, it warms up muscles and minds, and it helps us prepare for recitals. However, mindful review is most helpful; simply playing the notes isn’t useful if the student doesn’t remember what was introduced in each piece. Whatever new technique the piece introduced, going back and recreating the steps used to learn it will solidify it in your child’s mind. It also shows children the progress they’ve made in lessons‐pieces that used to be a struggle become normal, and then easy!

It can be really fun for a student to think back to when they first learned Variation A. How far have they come since then? Remembering how it felt to first learn a piece helps children put their current technical struggles in perspective. Have your child think about learning each technique for the first time, and recreate the steps their teacher used to teach it. Now, when they play the piece, their focus is on its purpose, and they can see how far they’ve come!

Review is also a great time to work on musicality and refine phrasing techniques. It’s simple to add vibrato to Lightly Row, or refine crescendos by adding them to Song of the Wind. When your child doesn’t need to focus their full attention on fingerings and other basics, there is more room for phrasing experiments!

- Shannon Jansma, published in the March 2016 issue of the Ann Arbor Suzuki Institute newsletter

One technique for enhancing practicing is watching a video before practicing. It’s a fun way to begin, and lets the child mentally prepare for practicing. Watching a video of a great performer models good technique and musicality as well as the real world requirements of performing. With the advent of YouTube, getting ahold of high quality videos is easy.

When watching a video, first simply observe. Afterwards, take turns saying what you enjoyed about the performance. Simple observations like “he had a beautiful sound” or “she played really fast” are good. As students become more adept at observing, they may make more advanced observations pertaining to phrasing, bow distribution, etc.

Watch again and try to discover what the performer is doing to accomplish what you heard or saw. For example, could his beautiful tone be due to a straight bow, or a rounded bow hand? Could her speed be because she knows exactly what finger is going next? Both parent and child should say how they think it’s working.

Focus on one technique you observed in the performer, and organize the practice around that. Best if it’s a small, well‐defined goal‐if your child noticed the performer’s intonation; don’t make the goal “play in tune”. Instead, focus on remembering to play C versus C#, or keeping threes right on top of the tape. IT can be useful to think of the Sesame Street format‐This practice was brought to you by careful 3s and smooth slurs!

- Shannon Jansma, published in the March 2016 issue of the Ann Arbor Suzuki Institute newsletter