Monkeying Around With The Violin

My four-year-old student A. is so cute, and I'm particularly pleased today because this morning she paid attention to her entire 30 minute lesson! One of the activities we did this morning was especially enjoyable for her:

She played "The Monkey Song" four times with good attention to keeping her bow only on one string at a time, and after each of the repetitions I had her take a step forward and pick up a plastic monkey from the "Barrel of Monkeys" game. Once she had all four monkeys and had made her way across the room to be standing in front of me, we linked their arms and hung them from one of her violin pegs, and she held her violin in playing position (with her head only) for a count of ten, holding up those monkeys.

She's improving in her ability to focus on a given task, which of course takes us miles in the right direction toward learning to play the violin!