New Blog Post Series For Beginning Suzuki Violin Students and Parents… As a parent, the beginning of the school-year is a natural time to evaluate my child’s activities and education. I don’t think I’m alone in this, because it’s also when I get the majority of inquiries about violin lessons. As I’ve been answering these […]
Why I Have My Kids Take Violin Lessons from SOMEONE ELSE
Teacher Appreciation week is the first full week of May, but since I think celebrating teachers for only a week is ridiculous, we’re devoting the whole month of May to teachers. (Yeah, yeah, and because I totally missed the first week of May somehow. I’m way behind on EVERYTHING this month.) I always knew that […]
More Practice Routines!
Today’s post is by my sister and fellow Suzuki violin teacher, McKenzie Clawson. Mckenzie: 7:20 Breakfast is wrapping up. I remind the nine year old violinist that it’s her turn to practice first and she has ten minutes until we start. There is eye-rolling and general chagrin. We chat for a few minutes and then […]
Sample Suzuki Practice Routines
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some things to consider when creating a practice routine for your family. In today’s post, I dig into the details and share our family’s practice routines. To be perfectly honest, our routines change from day to day depending on my energy levels, our schedule, and my kids’ […]
Suzuki Practice Routines
Ideas for Creating or Improving Your Family’s Suzuki Practice Routine… It’s finally beginning to feel like Spring here in Utah, and it’s making me long for fresh starts in so many ways. I’ve been going through kid clothes and throwing out everything too small and too worn. I’ve been going through the cupboards and putting […]
Why You and Your Student Should Listen to the Suzuki Recordings…
One of the most important principles of the Suzuki Method is listening, which is why Suzuki teachers ask students to purchase the cd or digital album with their Suzuki books. Whenever I introduce a new piece, my first assignment (and many other teachers’ too) is to do marathon listening–listening to that piece two hundred times […]
Minimum Baselines
Celebrating small successes on the tough days… I’ve written about minimum baselines before, but since I’m in the midst of a particularly trying time (Depression and anxiety, y’all.) I wanted to revisit the topic. Since building up and celebrating small wins is an important strategy for managing my mental health, I need to make sure […]
My New Guidelines for Students: Suzuki in the Time of Coronavirus
One of my many character flaws, is that I, when faced with a difficulty, will often put off creating a solution in the hope that the problem I’m facing will just…disappear. One of these difficulties is one you’re probably facing right now as well–online teaching due to Coronavirus. There was (and still is, to be […]
5 Suzuki Parenting Mistakes I’ve Made (So You Can Avoid Them)
This week in my oldest child’s violin lessons, he and his teacher reviewed goals from the past academic year and made new ones for the coming year. Last fall, we made some goals for practice and for the progress we hoped to see. At the time we made the goals, my son (seven now, six […]
How to Address Difficult Situations with Students…
I’m going to make a guess that if you’re reading this blog post, that you are, or have been, in a situation where you need to discuss something sensitive with a parent or student in your music studio. Maybe you’ve been meaning to have the conversation for a long time, and you’ve finally decided it’s […]