Practice Plans are for Parents Too

2-minute Practice Pre-planning

In Today’s Practice I will focus on being _________________________.

Consider the following: What does your child need most from you? What do you need to work on yourself as the parent to help bring out the best in your child? What sort of responses and attitudes from you set up the best environment for your child to learn in?

Some potential answers might be: encouraging, engaged & present, focused, positive, less talkative, focused on what is going well . . . .

In Today’s Practice our Main Goal is ____________________________.

Most weeks of lessons I will let my students know what my main goal for them is (this could be about technique, tone, dynamics or any number of things). The main goal of practice can be whatever it is you know your teacher is working with your child on the most.

It can also be something like: getting to the end of practice without fighting, finishing all the tasks on the practice chart, only making positive comments, using non-verbal cues to remind my child to do something while playing instead of interrupting and endless other options.

It can be helpful to just say to your child – “Today we are going to focus on _____ while we practice” at the start of each practice.

You may even want to write the focus of the day in big letters at the top of your practice notebook so you keep it in mind the whole practice.

The Three Most Important things to accomplish today are: ________________________.

You may have a long list of tasks to accomplish each week from your teacher. Deciding what the top three are for a particular day can help you make sure you don’t run out of time for something important. It can also help you rotate through material if you can’t get to everything everyday. (Didn’t get to something yesterday? That may need to go on the most important list for today).

Your teacher can help you prioritize things if you aren’t sure where to start. I am always open to a family saying to me “We just aren’t getting to everything every day . . . what should we make sure to always practice no matter what?” Most likely working on tone and reviewing will be on that list!

Bonus:

It can be really helpful to add any important events you are preparing for to your pre-planning list as well. Recital in one month or Institute in June – just having a reminder of what is coming up helps keep the focus on important goals while we practice as well.

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Here's an example of a quick practice plan in action.  The student chooses what each circle turns into as we go along, and the parent reminds the student of specific practice goals along the way (i.e. "with this one, let's see you keep your bow closer to the bridge"),