Incentives

I hate, and I mean hate, bribing children to learn. I attempt to eliminate silly rewards in my classroom-no toys, candy or dog and pony shows to

This all fell apart as we started serious Suzuki twinkling on the violin. Suddenly, we have a bean jar, AND a sticker chart. When the bean jar fills up, I have to scramble to find a decent kids' movie playing at the theatre (and they're always terrible!). Luckily, it's a huge jar. When the sticker chart fills up, JillyBoo will get an ice cream date with me and her teacher (She's at 53!).


So far, the two incentive machines have produced great results. But even the best bribes break down at times. This week, we slowed down on practicing in anticipation of a week-long violin-free trip. Today, attempting to squeeze in a long enough practice to count as a real practice and a make-up, mean mommy teacher actually removed two beans.

No practicing can happen when JillyBoo is balancing her bow ("Bowie") between her toes, but she also can't practice when she's in tears. Bad mommy teacher. It's an interesting phenomenon about JillyBoo that sometimes after a break, she actually comes back playing better than before.

I've struggled with the violin-free trips, and have found some great ways to keep her on task. First, we bring her Theory Time book to keep reading and talking about octave scales. Jilly Boo already reads A-E on the octave scale and can play and read whole, half, quarter and eighth notes using her I Can Read Music book, so it definitely makes a difference to keep talking about theory on vaca. For this week, her teacher also recommended that we bring our rhythm sticks to tap out new twinkles that we invent, as well as practice fingering on the sticks.

As an aside, it was interesting to watch JillyBoo attempt to invent a twinkle at lessons last week. She HATED it. JillyBoo has always wanted to be good at something without having to work at a skill. Her stubborness in this area ("I don't want to practice tying my shoes, I'll just do it when I know how.") is one reason that I insist that for at least the first year, we practice almost daily. I am not willing to have her involved in 4 or 5 different sports/dance/art activities, I'd rather have her work hard at something challenging, and then see how playing violin is easier when you break down a problem into managable parts.

For now, we're looking forward to a relaxing vacation in Portugal, and hope to meaningfully work learning into our trip!