Year: 1997

I’ve told Erin that when she is four we will start working at the violin again. (She turns four in less than two weeks.) I am committed to finding a way to make it work for us this time. We really have fizzled over the last three or four months. It’s not that progress is […]

I am trying to completely re-think both my motivation and my approach in teaching Erin. If I were to give myself advice at this stage I would say: Remember that I am not primarily trying to teach the violin. I am trying to grow a capable confident human being with a good spirit. The most […]

It hasn’t continued. I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to actually establish a routine of practising after the daily lessons (first at the institute, then with grandma) stopped. Erin has found daily practising with mom to be a big let-down after all the excitement and stimulation of the other children at […]

Erin’s grandma has been visiting, and she is a Suzuki violin teacher too, one with lots of experience and expertise. Erin has been having lessons with grandma, almost every day, and the enthusiasm built up during the institute has been running strong. She is learning to use her finger to play F-sharp and can now […]

We have just returned from our first Suzuki Institute together. Erin is 3 and a half, and is playing on a tiny thirty-second-size violin (which is a little too small for her, but a sixteenth is still much too big). I am Miranda, her mother, a former Suzuki violin student and a part-time Suzuki teacher. […]