A parent was asking about practice yesterday and how long a typical session should be, this was in connection with our class practice incentive and the issue of multiple play sessions in a day. Well, sorry kids, the answer is that they only count towards ONE tick on the weekly slip - the one for that day.
The Practice Ladder is a temporary incentive that measures DAILY practice only, regardless of how many times your child plays in one day. By all means divide up the session, say ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes after school, but it will still only count as one day. If children are doing multiple visits to the piano during the day (two to three minutes at a time), keep a rough estimate mentally and get them to make up any shortfall in the evening to earn the full point.
Lesson days are not counted, even if your child practises beforehand. This leaves a maximum of six days a week.
How long should they be practising?
Anything from ten to thirty minutes, depending on age and attention span. If you are erring on the longer side, encourage short breaks (sips of water, trip to the bathroom, fruit snack etc) to keep them refreshed and focussed.
How often?
Progress comes from regular and consistent practice which means that over time, playing will become easier, songs more fluent and the whole learning process more rewarding which in turn feeds motivation. It's a chicken and egg situation.
To make every ounce of their effort count, kids should play more days than they do not ie four days out of seven. Anything less than this is just not enough - too much time will be spent going over old ground and having to re-learn from the start rather than picking up where they left off the day before and moving forward. (This is the curse of holidays for most piano teachers - you'd be amazed how much kids forget over a break!)
That said, if you are looking for tasks and activities to structure home practice, then first stop should be the KeyNotes Practice Sheets, issued weekly in the follow-up emails.
For more ideas on how to extend or inject variety into practice then see the Practice Activities sheet in the Fairfield Piano Parents Group on FaceBook (look under Files).
If you have a keen box-ticker or sticker-fan on your hands and feel they are ready for a more thorough approach, then download the Practice Sticker Chart.
I am also working on a similar sheet for hands-together playing to help with coordination and fluency (challenges 1 and 2).
As a parent, at all times during practice, be positive and patient with your child and sensitive to the mood. Monitor their reactions and take a break when necessary. Practice needs to be light-hearted and fun and not so rigid that it becomes an exercise in box-ticking or fault-finding. That is guaranteed to kill the momentum! It's a fine balance but we want kids to look foward to practising and spending time at the keyboard with their parents. The USA-based Hoffman Academy has an interesting post on this and talks about three attributes that parents need to develop to ensure a happy piano lesson experience:
the ability to schedule and consistently carry out a daily practice session
the ability to not over-correct
the ability to keep practice fun and positive.
It's well worth the read. Find it here:
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