Piano Practice Trains

Up until lately, Russell has always reminded me when it was time to practice. Ms. Charity has a reward system where if you practice four times in between lessons, you get to choose a prize from the treasure chest. That has been great motivation for him! He's gotten fun pencils, bubbles, erasers and mini notepads, to name a few.

Lately, though, we've been so busy, that we've all forgotten about practicing. Then, we end up not getting four practices in and he's frustrated because he doesn't know his songs and the practice is discouraging.

So, I pulled out my secret weapon. My mom has a friend, Nina, who I have mentioned before. She is a professional musician and actually teaches other musicians how to teach music lessons. She recommended the book, Mommy, Can We Practice Now? It contains great, creative ways to make practicing fun. It has ideas that would work for any instrument and really for anything that you want your child to cooperate for and do. You could adapt it to work for a child who is disagreeable about something like getting dressed in the morning, getting your child to do schoolwork/homework, etc. It has some neat ideas in it.

The other day, just for fun, I decided to use one to help get us jump started for practice. I chose a page of train drawings and I used our handy dandy printer that can also be a copier to copy them onto cardstock. When Russ got home from school, he had a blast coloring the trains in. He probably spent 30 or more minutes just on that. He loves coloring!

Then I cut them out and had them in a pile while he practiced. If he played a song perfectly, he got to choose one of the train cars that had something in it. If he played a difficult song with only one mistake (and he kept going and didn't stop and bang the keys *grin*), he could still choose a car, but it had to be just a plain car. He loved it!

Here he is in the middle of practice and we're running out of trains because he was doing so well!


Near the end of his practice time, I started being even more picky about when he could choose a train. He liked that, too. He likes a challenge.


He loved setting them up while he practiced and if he got frustrated, he knew better than to bang the keys because his trains would all fall. He did great!

Randall had a set to color, too, and they both enjoyed playing with them.

If you would have any use for a book like this, I highly recommend it!