The Norm...

As I am sitting here typing out this post, my little one is putting in CD after CD of music and playing along. She has listened to and played with her Patrick Street CD, and worked on bits and pieces of various other songs we have including Vivaldi's Spring, spending extra time to listen over and over to the part that sounds like chirping birds and trying to get it just right.

Now she is working her way through Suzuki Book 4 piece by piece. I have to smile because she started trying to play Suzuki Book 4 songs back when I bought it for her. She was about 4 months shy of 5 years old and playing in the beginning half of Suzuki Book 1. At that time she would get the first notes and a few others here and there in the song. Now she has nearly every note only missing a few here and there when she tries to shift further than 3rd position or the song moves too quickly. She occassionally stops to listen to a section then works it out on the repeat. It is amazing how much of all those songs she has figured out for herself. They sound almost completely right though I am sure her bowings are not correct and some of the fast sections need work.

This has become the norm in our house. Evenings spent trying to watch TV but at the same time listening to Haley doing what she does with her violin whether it is to her CDs or to youtube videos. I could never tire of watching that look of sheer determination and focus on her adorable face.

She and I had a "Girls' Day" today and spent most of it playing violin. Since her Book 2 recital is scheduled for this weekend, for the past 2 weeks we have broken practice into 3 segments and split them throughout the day...Book 3/scales/theory/shifting work, Book 2 recital practice, and fiddling. She has about an hour of focus at a time (with a break occassionally) so splitting it into 3 segments has increased her focused practice time. Someone on a Suzuki chat I frequent mentioned that kids have no concept of time...maybe that is to my advantage when trying to get so much done.