Music

There are many claims about of the benefits of learning a musical instrument at home and your child’s mental development.

Here are some examples.

Many students have shown interest in learning an instrument in primary school as well as secondary school. Although I have talked about this before, I would like to remind parents and caregivers that I am happy to talk about it with them if they would like?

The students who will probably advance the quickest would be students that have a private tutor and practice regularly ideally daily even if it is only for a few minutes. The student may respond differently to different instrument tutors and it might be better to try different tutors if your child doesn’t respond well.

The biggest issues to overcome usually are that beginning to play most instruments requires a huge amount of mental energy. If your child lacks perseverance or determination this might be the time they will wish to discontinue their lessons. There may be little rewards in the beginning as it becomes a lot of effort for little reward. This does stage doesn’t usually last as learning becomes more fun after the rudimentary skills develop. In plain speak it just means that, it is no so much fun in the beginning, it becomes more fun as they get better. (See Illustration).

There are ways to encourage your child to keep up lessons such as learn with them or offer some incentive or reward. If your child’s music is not sounding the best, please don’t discourage them just as I would imagine that your child’s first words were not legible and they were not discouraged to learn how to talk. This is a natural process of learning.

One final point I would like to make is that some tutors only focus on copying or ROTE learning. Although this has merits, I would strongly urge to also include some creative work as well for example, your child has learned “Mary had a little lamb”. Once the child has mastered “Mary had a little lamb”, try to get the child to rearrange the tune or change the rhythm of it. This way you are nurturing creativity from the onset. Almost all educational experts would agree that encouraging creativity and problem solving skills are important for your child’s future no matter what their vocations will be.

I Hope you all have a lovely break and I look forward to seeing you next term,