Effective violin practice during the Holidays? Is this possible? Travel and family in town makes practice inconsistent. But here are some ideas to make the best of violin practice for the Pre-Twinkle students while still enjoying time with family during Thanksgiving!

Pre-Twinkle Activity for the Day of Thanksgiving

We all know that young students need lots of clapping, listening and singing.

Turkey takes a while to cook right? And your Suzuki student will need to be engaged while waiting. Here is a great little game you can use!

Listening Practice Cards

This is a set of 7 cards. You can have a student do the activities within one day while waiting for the dinner, or while in the kitchen waiting for things to cook.

• You can also do a 7 day challenge starting at Thanksgiving or leading to Thanksgiving.
• Use while traveling.
• In your private studio, you can have a fun and different lesson. Go through the activities, then assign the cards for the child to do on Thanksgiving day or for a week!

Find the cards here

Suzuki Pre-Twinkle Practice Cards for Christmas

If you would like to use the same cards with Christmas theme you can find them here. The cards will look like the picture below

Practicing While The Family is Over for the Holidays

Having your whole family over for Thanksgiving? Not sure how to fit practice during that time?

Music can be a wonderful way for children to develop confidence through performing. And the holidays provide a great opportunity to build that confidence!

We may be too busy to work on technical details and polish pieces. But we would have the time to present what we have learned to our family members.

Some ideas to make it more fun:

• In my studio and public music classroom, I usually do an assignment ,where I ask my students to play for at least one family member during Thanksgiving. They need to ask their audience to write a short note with what they heard, what they liked best, what improvement they have noticed since last year, etc. The note becomes a “record” of the performance. This way the student gets appreciation and direct feedback at the same time. The student then keeps and brings the notes to the lesson right after Thanksgiving.
• With my private students I read and discuss what the positive aspects of their playing are through the notes they’ve received. With my public school classes, I ask students to work in teams of two and discuss their accomplishments (or how many positive things they “collected” in their notes). I normally ask my students to keep practice logs. In this case, I accept the notes as a practice log and I give them credit for it.
• Make it fun and create concert tickets to give to family members and have a home concert!

Happy Thanksgiving