To make hard skills easy

To have music ready to play with others

For mastery

To build confidence

 To build technique

In our culture we tend to value novelty and consider anything new to be exciting. Especially as adults, many of us love variety and newness.

In the Suzuki method we emphasize mastery and review.  Sometimes, that can create a tension between this desire for newness and what you are being asked to do in practice with your child. However, it is this repetition that helps young players build skills on their instrument and connections in the brain.

“Repetition has a bad reputation.  We tend to think of it as dull and uninspiring. But this perception is titanically wrong.Repetition is the single most powerful lever we have to improve our skills, because it uses the built in mechanism for making the wires of our brains faster and more accurate . . . Embracing repetition means changing your mind-set; instead of viewing it as a chore, view it as your most powerful tool”    ~  The Little Book of Talent  by Daniel Coyle

Remembering why we review – rather than just seeing it as a list of chores on the practice list can be very helpful and summer is a great time to put extra focus on review, or get a review program going if you haven’t been doing one yet.

There are great review charts online if you do a google search.  One that is a favorite in my studio is the “Rainbow Review” chart that can be downloaded here AuntRhody.org for violin students up to Book 5.

Some ideas to get students motivated to review over the summer: 

Contact your local retirement home and put on a “Review Recital”for residents 

Go to the local farmers market and play – all those review pieces make a great set list 

Set up a lemonade stand and be the entertainment – play while waiting for customers and get in lots of review

Play a skype concert for family members

Practice outside and enjoy a new setting to practice in 

Sometimes having a reason to get pieces ready to play is good motivation for the student to get those pieces polished back up & makes it extra fun as well.

How do you keep your child or students motivated to review?