If your young child takes music lessons for an instrument...

[Mama Geek]

What are your home practice sessions like?  

 

I am trying to learn how we can do better.  My dd is 5.  Yes I know that quitting right now is an option and I am very close to that.

[Acorn]

For beginning violin, teacher is asking for five minutes a day. I was shocked it was so little, but kids are readily agreeing to 5 min. But then actually play 10.

[Jackie]

My daughter recently started piano. Her teacher assigns one song to practice and a couple quick worksheets of theory. I have her work on piano five minutes a day.

[Tsuga]

1. Breathe.

2. Bribe.

3. Dance. For the little one she practices and I dance to the music. I also interpretive dance for the older one as she learns dynamics. At least they are playing. They will keep pushing through to watch me dance.

4. They play for their dollies. They make concerts for the dollies. This takes forever. "Everybody" lines up, even Patches the Bear and Ellie the Elephant, and they get ready to play whatever Suzuki piece it is. Usually they want to make it perfect for their dollies. (But they don't care about perfect for me. I know. It's actually ADORABLE, though.)

5. They also teach their dollies. Even the nine-year-old still teaches music theory to her special American Girl doll. It melts my heart just thinking about it. "Can you explain the notes to her and why you're playing it that way?" Believe me this is even more adorable and touching with the littles.

 

I will try to find an old thread in which I solicited advice on this. I internalized a lot of it and it's working... mostly. But also... breathe. They will get there. It's a long road, so one step at a time. :)

Edited November 20, 2015 by Tsuga

[Tsuga]

Oh yeah... sometimes I would say, "The babies [dollies] need a lullaby. Can you just play this one song for them?" At 5, 6, 7, after a long day, just one song is WAY better than nothing, to keep up the routine.

[zarabellesmom]

My oldest is ten and plays about 20 minutes a day. My youngest is seven, but started when she was 5. Her practice routine hasn't really changed since she started. She actually practices longer than the older.  Since she weasels out of practice so frequently, she agrees to practice longer when we finally convince her to drag her instrument out.  Both are very motivated to play over FaceTime for grandparents. We've used a sticker chart for my youngest. She also likes to play a song and have you guess what she is playing. Sometimes she makes up random stuff and tries to trick us.

[redsquirrel]

Both my kids started piano at that age. Practice was about 5 mins a day, 5 days a week.  I would do things like say, "Please play for me while I make breakfast" and call that practice. 

 

And then, of course, I would always tell them how much I love to hear them play and how every time they practice get so much better. 

 

My now 10 year old practices for about 20 mins a day.

[Targhee]

Short sessions - 20 min max.

Sit side by side

Don't seek perfection - pick ONE aspect per practice session to work on (eg rhythm OR intonation OR form)

Praise more than critique - make it a positive experience.

It also helps to verbally reflect on how far they have come. When middle dd was 5 and learning the basic embouchure for flute it seemed like she'd never get it. She sat in front of a mirror and practiced for days. She finally did get it. Later when she'd run into trouble or hit a wall we'd talk about how she thought she'd never get a sound out of her flute, put she persisted and got it!

[MrsWeasley]

What instrument? Are you attending lessons? Are you taking notes? Have you talked to your teacher about struggles with practicing? For a young child, I strongly believe that the point of music lessons is to teach the parent how to teach the child at home. How is behavior during lesson? Do you have a consistent practice time early in the day?

 

I have a five year old playing violin. He has been playing almost two years and at this point practices for half an hour a day. I found the book Helping Parents Practice by Edmund by Edmund Sprunger incredibly valuable and read a section every day. A typical practice session looks like this:

 

We start it at the beginning of our school day, as playing the violin and reading are by far the hardest work we will do all day.

He will take a bow with his violin.

We have a competition: Can he get his violin in perfect posture before I turn around/count to five/spell his name/etc...?

He plays a scale in the key of his current practice piece. I give him a specific focus piece (in tune first fingers, dropping the elbow far enough when crossing to the E string, good table top fourth fingers, etc...). When he's done, I ask him how that went and how he knows it went well. I do not correct anything outside of the focus point. I may ask him to stop when we get to the focus part to check to see if he's doing it, as he can't always remember by the end of the scale.

We go through the new things we are working on, and I try to make it a game. We both isolate technique (for violin, examples could be circle bows, staccato bows, hooked bows, slurs, etc...) and difficult sections of no more than few measures. We might roll a die or two to see how many repetitions he will do. We might stack a block for each repetition he does until it falls. I might have him start his repetitions at the bottom of the stairs and "level up" for each good repetition. When he was very early in learning to play the violin and couldn't play a song, we'd fill jars with pennies for every perfect bow hold. We played a lot of games like stirring soup with perfect bow holds, playing fast fingers to practice good table top fingers, etc... These are things that the teacher taught me how to play with him at home. Like with the scale, every repetition has a focus that he's supposed to check. I try to find something positive to say about everything he plays, even if he failed to do his focus correctly: I'll compliment his bow hold, I'll compliment how I can see how he adjusted something to try to play the focus part better, keeping his violin on his shoulder, whatever... We work on new technique/trouble passages/new passages for no longer than ten minutes, and I try to avoid directly correcting him. If he is doing something wrong and then I see him do it in another piece, I make sure to compliment where I saw it go well in that piece. If I hear a wrong note, I will ask him to sing the song and then repeat it: he generally corrects it then. If he cannot sing it, I stop work on the new piece and move to review. If I find my child starting to grow frustrated, we will move onto review. At the end of practice, I will put the song on repeat while we do other school stuff for the day. I might gently readjust his body, though sometimes that can feel intrusive, so I try to do that sparingly. I periodically record myself practicing with him. Out of the moment, I can see how, even though I'm just trying to help, a lot of my instructions can sound overwhelming or critical. The last thing I want to do is make him feel like he's bad at playing or that playing is too hard.

Review: Another thing I do to help keep practice feel overwhelming or that playing the violin is just a struggle is by having more than half our practice every day be focused on review, on playing songs that he already knows well. We still keep focus points, because there's always something to improve in a piece. Since he's in a Suzuki program, all the kids learn the same repertoire and play it every week at his group lessons, so there's also that motivation for playing review pieces well. We always end on a review piece of his choice and a bow. Very occasionally, we end with a violin-related reward, generally watching David Garrett or Lindsey Stirling play violin on Youtube. I always make sure to thank him for playing for me and telling him how much I love to listen to him play.

 

I will also add that having frequent performance opportunities also makes a huge difference. My middle child loves loves loves the attention of recitals, festivals, etc... and I try to make sure he has a performance opportunity at least every two months. I think having music lessons in the context of a community is important: my son loves to play with others, and the more he works hard at his instrument, the more he can participate in his group class. I also think that playing recordings of the pieces every day is very important.

 

That said, I do think it's partly temperamental. My eight year old has a very low frustration thresh hold for everything, and this extends to piano. I first read Helping Parents Practice when struggling with her when she was seven, and if I hadn't we'd probably have quit. For my oldest, I really needed to let go of the idea that practice should always look like her happily playing piano. Playing an instrument is hard. It involves a certain amount of frustration. For her especially, it's important to spend time during practice time acknowledging that frustration and working through it. I spend a lot of time acknowledging the feelings and trying to fulfill my eldest's wish for things to be easy right away in fantasy: "You seem discouraged. Wouldn't it be great if I had a magic wand and could make you be able to play this perfectly without practicing?" I make sure to praise a lot for hanging in there when she's in a tricky spot. As she's gotten older, I've encouraged her to tell me what she doesn't like about a specific passage or technique after we finish practicing, but initially, giving time for it during practice time was actually time well spent. For her, focusing on building on previous success and giving as much feeling of autonomy as possible was especially important. I will also say that learning to manage my frustration and not get sucked into her frustration was really important. I find having my morning coffee during her practice and having my knitting has helped with that for me.

 

Sorry for the novel. I hope this is helpful. Music has been such a wonderful part of our family life, but there have also been points where I found it a struggle. I really think it's unfortunate that if it were math or reading, there'd be a lot more support with trying to find a way to help teach a child, but with music, people are so quick to advise to let it go. I hope you find some of my experience useful.

Edited November 21, 2015 by MrsWeasley

[Guest]

DS has been playing piano for 4 years and generally does 1-1.5 hrs a day.

He starts off with scales or other foundational work regarding hand movements, posture, etc. then he moves on to his songs (most of the time he has 3-5 songs). Depending on what stage he's at, he'll either be going through the whole song learning the notes or breaking it up into appropriate phrases to work on tempo, dynamics, proper hand movement, and so on. After he's gotten all that down, he'll put it together phrase by phrase to fine-tune it and memorize it. He will also work on sight-reading and rhythm exercises each practice time. Theory is done in the computer lab after lessons. This will change slightly if he has festivals or completions coming up that require a specific repertoire or whatever.

He's been playing violin for about 6 months and practices about 30 minutes a day on 2-3 songs. No idea what he does though; I told him I would help him with piano, but if he wants to learn other instruments, practicing was squarely on his shoulders.

Ohh....I think I understand what you are asking. DS doesn't willing practice; I still have to remind him. When he's going over one phrase for the 20th time and still hasn't gotten something right, there will be tears. But for the most part, it's just what we do...just like any other school subject that has its ups and downs.

Edited November 21, 2015 by WendyAndMilo

[bluemongoose]

My DSs have played cello a little more than a year and are 7 and 9 yo. They recently went up a level in lessons and have moved from 30 min to 45 min per day. In the beginning the teacher asked for small bites adding up to 20-30 min per day. So 5-10 min here and there...That was very hard for me to work into a schedule and I knew they could handle the full 30 with my help, so we practiced starting with 15 and over the course of a month we worked up to 30 min per day.

 

My DD has been playing violin for 3 years and is practicing an hour a day. 

[zarabellesmom]

What instrument? Are you attending lessons? Are you taking notes? Have you talked to your teacher about struggles with practicing? For a young child, I strongly believe that the point of music lessons is to teach the parent how to teach the child at home. How is behavior during lesson? Do you have a consistent practice time early in the day?

 

I have a five year old playing violin. He has been playing almost two years and at this point practices for half an hour a day. I found the book Helping Parents Practice by Edmund by Edmund Sprunger incredibly valuable and read a section every day. A typical practice session looks like this:

 

We start it at the beginning of our school day, as playing the violin and reading are by far the hardest work we will do all day.

He will take a bow with his violin.

We have a competition: Can he get his violin in perfect posture before I turn around/count to five/spell his name/etc...?

He plays a scale in the key of his current practice piece. I give him a specific focus piece (in tune first fingers, dropping the elbow far enough when crossing to the E string, good table top fourth fingers, etc...). When he's done, I ask him how that went and how he knows it went well. I do not correct anything outside of the focus point. I may ask him to stop when we get to the focus part to check to see if he's doing it, as he can't always remember by the end of the scale.

We go through the new things we are working on, and I try to make it a game. We both isolate technique (for violin, examples could be circle bows, staccato bows, hooked bows, slurs, etc...) and difficult sections of no more than few measures. We might roll a die or two to see how many repetitions he will do. We might stack a block for each repetition he does until it falls. I might have him start his repetitions at the bottom of the stairs and "level up" for each good repetition. When he was very early in learning to play the violin and couldn't play a song, we'd fill jars with pennies for every perfect bow hold. We played a lot of games like stirring soup with perfect bow holds, playing fast fingers to practice good table top fingers, etc... These are things that the teacher taught me how to play with him at home. Like with the scale, every repetition has a focus that he's supposed to check. I try to find something positive to say about everything he plays, even if he failed to do his focus correctly: I'll complement his bow hold, I'll complement how I can see how he adjusted something to try to play the focus part better, keeping his violin on his shoulder, whatever... We work on new technique/trouble passages/new passages for no longer than ten minutes, and I try to avoid directly correcting him. If he is doing something wrong and then I see him do it in another piece, I make sure to compliment where I saw it go well in that piece. If I hear a wrong note, I will ask him to sing the song and then repeat it: he generally corrects it then. If he cannot sing it, I stop work on the new piece and move to review. If I find my child starting to grow frustrated, we will move onto review. At the end of practice, I will put the song on repeat while we do other school stuff for the day. I might gently readjust his body, though sometimes that can feel intrusive, so I try to do that sparingly. I periodically record myself practicing with him. Out of the moment, I can see how, even though I'm just trying to help, a lot of my instructions can sound overwhelming or critical. The last thing I want to do is make him feel like he's bad at playing or that playing is too hard.

Review: Another thing I do to help keep practice feel overwhelming or that playing the violin is just a struggle is by having more than half our practice every day be focused on review, on playing songs that he already knows well. We still keep focus points, because there's always something to improve in a piece. Since he's in a Suzuki program, all the kids learn the same repertoire and play it every week at his group lessons, so there's also that motivation for playing review pieces well. We always end on a review piece of his choice and a bow. Very occasionally, we end with a violin-related reward, generally watching David Garrett or Lindsey Stirling play violin on Youtube. I always make sure to thank him for playing for me and telling him how much I love to listen to him play.

 

I will also add that having frequent performance opportunities also makes a huge difference. My middle child loves loves loves the attention of recitals, festivals, etc... and I try to make sure he has a performance opportunity at least every two months. I think having music lessons in the context of a community is important: my son loves to play with others, and the more he works hard at his instrument, the more he can participate in his group class. I also think that playing recordings of the pieces every day is very important.

 

That said, I do think it's partly temperamental. My eight year old has a very low frustration thresh hold for everything, and this extends to piano. I first read Helping Parents Practice when struggling with her when she was seven, and if I hadn't we'd probably have quit. For my oldest, I really needed to let go of the idea that practice should always look like her happily playing piano. Playing an instrument is hard. It involves a certain amount of frustration. For her especially, it's important to spend time during practice time acknowledging that frustration and working through it. I spend a lot of time acknowledging the feelings and trying to fulfill my eldest's wish for things to be easy right away in fantasy: "You seem discouraged. Wouldn't it be great if I had a magic wand and could make you be able to play this perfectly without practicing?" I make sure to praise a lot for hanging in there when she's in a tricky spot. As she's gotten older, I've encouraged her to tell me what she doesn't like about a specific passage or technique after we finish practicing, but initially, giving time for it during practice time was actually time well spent. For her, focusing on building on previous success and giving as much feeling of autonomy as possible was especially important. I will also say that learning to manage my frustration and not get sucked into her frustration was really important. I find having my morning coffee during her practice and having my knitting has helped with that for me.

 

Sorry for the novel. I hope this is helpful. Music has been such a wonderful part of our family life, but there have also been points where I found it a struggle. I really think it's unfortunate that if it were math or reading, there'd be a lot more support with trying to find a way to help teach a child, but with music, people are so quick to advise to let it go. I hope you find some of my experience useful.

This is very much what my husband does with my daughter. He attends her lessons with her and each practice at home is a mini lesson. There's a lot of good advice here.

[happyhappyjoyjoy]

My 6 year old has been playing violin for 11 months.  She practices about 15 min. a day.  I switch it up between playing with her (on my guitar), having her play to the Suzuki track, and her practicing on her own.

 

My 11 year old practices at least 30 min. a day on his drums.

[ByGrace3]

When my oldest started piano at 5, I had to sit and practice with her to help. Ds started at 7 and I have never helped once. Number 3 will start later. I learned that lesson! All my kids did music and movement classes and had a lot of exposure to music, but I need instrument learning to be apart from me, so waiting is the best plan for us right now.

[EmilyGF]

With my just-turned-7-year-old, we have a list from the violin teacher (I sit in at the lesson and take notes, and then basically try to do what was done at the lesson with a few tweaks to improve). She and I practice for 10 minutes before school, then another 10 minutes after lunch. I set the timer when we are ready to begin and stop when it beeps no matter how long it has been.

 

We practice 7 days per week. If we have to, we practice just after dinner. I was told that violin is tricky enough that missing even a day per week would cause frustration. My oldest son, 10, plays piano and practices 30-40 minutes per day on his own and 10-15 minutes per day with me. He doesn't have to practice Sundays (though I may change that, since his sister has to) because piano isn't as finicky as violin.

 

Emily 

[musicianmom]

*

Edited May 22, 2022 by musicianmom

[...................]

We kept it under ten minutes at that age.  I never had any problems getting my daughter to practice until she was in Classical Repertoire, with an hour of required practice per day.  Now, she is "taking a break" from the pressure, and I fear, will never go back.

 

So, keep it do-able from the start and make sure you communicate with teachers going forward, and watch your own child's level of challenge.  

 

 

[skimomma]

My dd is 12 and plays the violin.  She now practices independently for about 90 minutes per weekday.  Weekends are a bit more random depending on what we have going on.  She started at age 4 and did not start to transition to independent practicing until around age 9.  She was not fully independent until age 11.

 

Dd always generally had a pretty good attitude about practicing but we did hit a few rocky patches early on when I called it a success if the violin came out at all.  Her lessons were 30 minutes and I tried to mimic the pattern and length of the lessons for practicing at home.  But I would cut practice short if things were not going well.  We always started with Twinkle review.  Then scales, review songs, working piece(s), and lastly whatever extra stuff she might be working on for a concert or group play.  

 

Until age 7 or so, I would employ the help of stuffed animals and dolls as needed.  We had a pinky-eating (stuffed) chicken that was really good at keeping dd's bow-hold in order.  Anything to keep it fun.  I think dd was inherently well-suited for music instruction anyway, but her current work ethic and success at tackling difficult music is amazing.  For us it was absolutely worth the initial growing pains to get here.  

[knittingout]

The goal for my 6 year old is 6 min of playing ( violin) in good position. Occasionally this can take 30 min of messing around.

 

For the 2 year old it is one activity and actually hitting proper position once and holding it.

[Hobbes]

My 7-almost-8 yo has been playing piano for about 2 1/2 years (because of her insistent desire to learn). She loves piano, she doesn't love practicing. She now practices about 15 mins/day and it has become more of a habit to settle in and work on her songs without protest - she's starting to see the value, especially as the songs are more interesting.

 

At 5, I had to tell her each thing she needed to practice (she was not a reader then) and it was max 10 mins, often 5. She still loves piano and I'm hoping to see the practice time and value slowly increase. For now, I let her work through the clear notes the teacher put in her book and just send her back to repeat if the practice sounded rushed or shortened.

 

My newly 6 yo has mentioned wanting to start, but she's less obsessed with music and I'm holding her off until next year, at which point she will hopefully be a fairly solid reader... that helps with practices!

Edited November 22, 2015 by indigoellen@gmail.com

[IsabelC]

My youngest is now 7 and does her practice without too much fuss most days. Thinking back to when she was five, though, I did a lot of fun and games and outright bribery to make her practice every day. We used the Zuki Beads a lot (a sort of one line abacus that attaches to the music stand) and I structured her practice using that, eg two beads for playing this exercise twice correctly, two beads for going over this section of your piece, one for a game, etc. She used to say she hated it and wanted to give up every so often, and I just stalled and said she can give up at some later date. Eventually something clicked and she figured out that practising helps you be able to play pieces you enjoy, and now she says she likes playing violin.

 

We now work together to structure her practice, and we work to goals rather than time (eg we are going to fix the runs on page two of this piece, play that scale and arpeggio with all the bowing variations, and polish the dynamics of that other piece), so when the work is done then she is finished (although I still try to keep her practice to less than one hour if she is functioning well, and less than half an hour if she is tired or busy that day). I am big on not just supervising practice, but also explicitly teaching practice techniques as we go. So a lot of the practice will be me explaining things like "Don't keep repeating the whole phrase, you need to work on the position change in bar 76, so let's just practice those three notes slowly" or "SLOW DOWN and fix your intonation" (she's a bit of a speed demon), but also we joke around quite a bit ("Where's your vibrato? Is it hiding under the sofa?"). She still enjoys visual humor, so sometimes I will just pull a pained face if she's out of  tune, and if she does something really well I will occasionally pretend to fall off my chair in astonishment (she finds this the most hilarious thing ever).

The other thing I do (and this is with our practice for piano and wind instruments as well) is try to insist on daily practice. If there is no time or we're all sick, the practice might be extremely short, but it still happens if at all possible. If we go away, the instruments (except for the piano) go with us. If it's Christmas or your birthday, it's still a practice day. If your are having a lesson today, you practice beforehand. You practice every day that you eat, and if you're too sick to get out of bed you can still listen to the CD. I know that some teachers and parents prefer to have practice-free days so that students are fresher and more interested on practice days, though (some kids do well with 4 days a week practice, one day lesson and 2 days off), so YMMV.

 

With 5yos, I think they usually find it surprisingly hard to notice the connection between their practice efforts and the improvement in their technique. Something I found useful for that was to occasionally do a flashback practice. Pull out something she learned in her very first few lessons, something super basic like "Let's go with Middle C" on the piano, or "3 nice bow holds" on the violin. When she succeeds, praise her extravagantly, at which point she will likely giggle and/or exclaim at how easy the task was. Then you can remind her how tricky it was at first, and explain that practice turns difficult things into easy things. 

Edited November 23, 2015 by IsabelC

[Ausmumof3]

I don't know if our method is successful as both mine just want to quit. But I made them just practise each piece and scale once each day. I did try to make them go over any sticky bits slowly. I also started a sticker reward system but the rewards were for doing it without complaining so they never got there.

[fdrinca]

Agree that at 5 you really need to sit next to your child and encourage, encourage, encourage. 

 

We do piano early in the day, before school work on most days. 

 

DD really enjoys singing along with her practice.

[kbutton]

My kids are almost a year into piano lessons, and they are 7 (almost 8) and 11. The teacher teaches them how to practice--she makes sure they understand how to improve each thing she wants them to improve and makes a plan during class. She writes it down. There is no set time to practice. The kids work on each thing she marks, and while I might need to remind them they "haven't practiced today," that's as difficult as it gets. If something is coming along well, they practice fast; if they are stuck, they generally work through it. The younger one might avoid that piece a bit, but when the next lesson comes around, he listens for how to fix it, and then he does work it out. He still practices very thoroughly on the other stuff.

 

Truly, I think the teacher just knows how to help them feel competent and motivated. I think she makes them feel like rock stars. Even when my 7 y.o. couldn't move his fingers independently and had zero strength to play anything much, she found stuff for him to do, and it made him feel great. If he's not where he's supposed to be at some point during he day, he's often found at the piano, voluntarily. 

 

I took lessons starting at 5 and didn't like to practice. It seemed like it took forever. But, my teacher didn't really make playing enjoyable or make me feel competent. She didn't alter her teaching or do anything to help *me* improve. If I wasn't getting something, it was my fault, basically. I didn't count right, or I didn't curve my fingers enough, etc I also had friends that had the same teacher, and they were better players, so the teacher didn't nag them as much. My boys' teacher finds ways to work out those details about timing, curved fingers, etc. and still make them feel fantastic, and in return, they work their butts off for her. (They do have a natural ear for music, but they are wiggly boys with ADHD and other diagnoses, so they aren't who most people would expect to be model students.) 

[purpleowl]

My oldest started piano lessons right about the time she turned 5.  For us, it actually worked (still works) better for me to just tell her it's time to practice and let her do her thing.  Her teacher writes down what she needs to do in a notebook - e.g. "Page 12 - play 2 times each day. Count out loud while you play."  If I notice a particular error, like her hands are clearly on the wrong keys or something, I point it out once, and if she pushes back, I just say, "Okay, well, you and Mrs. F can talk about that at your next lesson."  Nowadays (she's nearly 7), I do frequently hear her improvising or picking out tunes she knows, and I have to ask, "Have you finished the practice that Mrs. F wanted you to do?"  But I think there's value in those other things she does, too, so I don't try to stop her, but just make sure she also does what's been assigned.

 

But if I'm trying to sit there with her and direct her practice, it doesn't go well.  Maybe she's just odd, since so many others have said the opposite!

[KSinNS]

Every kid and family is different, but this is how we do it. 

 

I go to lessons and take lots of notes. 

 

We start with a poem (teacher's idea, but it gets poetry memorization out of the way)

First favourite song (or a preferred activity clapping for the 2 year old)

technical exercises (tonalization, bow games, vibrato)

Scales (a few)

Studies (if there are any)

New stuff (work on little bits with drill then the whole song)

Review (at least a couple of review songs)

Fiddle stuff (sometimes)

Last favourite song (or game)

They go get a treat (every day, even if they are super-naughty)

 

I do little practice games and rewards for the littler ones-stickers on their shirts, movement games, that kind of thing. This is super critical at the beginning when it is soooooooo painful. 

 

Some kids like a list. I'll drop things if they are getting tired. I don't time practices, but my current 5 can go 1/2 hour (she's finished book 1 and has been playing for 3 years so we built up to this). My others could probably manage between 10-20 minutes, less at first-the early technique stuff on violin is brutal. If they are tired, it's usually best to stop. Short is better than too long. 

 

They practice every day but Sunday, but some days are just quick review with Daddy (we call it a concert). 

[lindsey]

Mine is 7 (almost 8) and has been taking piano for about 15 months. He practices six days a week for 10 minutes tops. Sure beats the 30 minutes I practiced as a kid. :P Basically I expect him to play each song two or three times each day at the beginning of the week (when it's new and he's just figuring it out/making lots of mistakes--I sit with him for these few days to help/encourage), and by the end of the week/just before the next lesson he plays it until it's played pretty much perfectly (so usually once or twice per day). Then flash cards a few times a week, too.