8 Fun Violin Practice Games for Kids
Violin is not an easy instrument to learn, especially
for a young child. This is partly because your child won’t be actually playing music right away and would need to practice the pre-violin skills first, such as holding the bow correctly and producing the right sound playing a single note. All the pre-violin skills might feel boring for your preschooler who wants to play his or her first song.
How can you encourage your child to practice repetition and keep it fun?
1. Keep the practicing sessions short, or up to 5 minutes long.
2. Try the following 8 ideas to make the practice time fun and motivating:
Silly Cards. Make silly cards showing different physical activities, such as sticking out tongue, standing on one foot, closing eyes, opening mouth wide, closing one eye, wiggling bottom, doing fishy month, playing pizzicato, making rabbit face, singing the piece, etc.
Have your child draw a new silly card for each repetition. For example, if your child plays the Twinkle song and draws “sticking out the tongue,” he or she should play twinkle with tongue out the whole time.
For a silly bonus repetition ask your child to try to do all of the things at the same time.
Matryoshka. This Russian doll comes in handy
in teaching to practice repetition. Every time the child plays a repetition, open one doll. When he or she gets to the second last doll, have a treat in it, instead of the tiny doll.
Violin Tour. Take your youngster “on tour”, playing an exercise one time in each room of the house, on the balcony, outdoors, etc.
Drinking cups. Place small cups turned upside down on the table and hide a treat in one of them. Let your student lift one of the cups for each successful repetition.
Toy audience. Let your child play one of the Twinkle rhythms for each of his or her favorite stuffed animals. Each of the animals would “thank” your child after the performance and “ask” to play the Twinkle-Variation again and again.
Abacus. Flick a bead for each repetition until the child plays it 10 times. It’s so simple and the kids love it.
Simon Says. In this popular game, you can take turns with your child to be “Simon”. For example, when you play A on the violin, your child should sit down, stand up when you play E, jump up when you play F#, etc. Then, your child plays a note and you do the correct movements.
Prevent the Fall. Place a small stuffed animal on the violin hold, just to the left of the G string. Ask your child to play the homework exercise 5 times avoiding dropping the animal.
Olesya MacNeil has been teaching children since 1991 and striving to make every music lesson educational and fun!
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