After the Novelty Has Gone
The principal difficulty in giving a child music instruction lies in keeping alive his interest after the novelty has gone. There are, no doubt, as many different methods of doing this as there are different teachers, but kinks that have worked well with one child may well be passed on to others. Here are two that have worked splendidly with my five-year-old daughter who takes daily pianoforte lessons from me.
We have a small note book and a red pencil. This is her daily report book, in which I write the date, the duration of the lesson, and—most important of all— the word "GOOD" with one, two or three lines under it, based on the following rule. One line relates to the pupil's attitude in coming to the lesson and deportment throughout. Another line relates to oral and written work. And the third line pertains to work at the keyboard. When any one of the above phases of the lesson is poor, a line is omitted.
The child soon becomes very interested in securing a GOOD with the three lines which represents a perfect lesson. The book is something which gives her pleasure to show to Daddy each evening for his comment. In case of an outside teacher such a book may be kept, by the mother, of the child's daily practicing to be shown to the teacher on each lesson day. The effect on the child is the arousing of her pride which, after all, is necessary to the successful carrying out of any work.
Here is another kink which works well in connection with interval reading. Using staff paper I write notes, while little five-year-old names the distance from note to note. For each interval which she correctly names I place a cross over the note with my pencil, omitting it when the interval is incorrectly named. Her eagerness to get a cross over every note keeps her attention focused on what would ordinarily be a dry subject, and causes her to think—which is most difficult, but necessary.
It is a fact that nearly every normal child has to be made to practice. Whether the practice gets results depends on the mother. I am sure that any mother who will give the matter a little thought and introduce original methods into the daily practice will make that lesson period a pleasure both to herself and the child, rather than allowing it to be the disagreeable task it often is. To prove that it has done so in my case I may mention that for twenty-four successive days, my little girl has not lost a line in her book and she often goes to the piano voluntarily to work a little by herself.