Keepviolinin

Hope everyone will have a safe and happy Halloween weekend! We will be playing our violins at Questa Elementary School @ 7pm tomorrow, so come back for more pictures from tomorrow’s event!!

Click here to watch the violin performance from the Mountain House string players:)

I attended my first rehearsal with the Livermore-Amador Symphony last night and it was so much fun being with so many musicians that simply just love to play their instruments:) This is something that I had a very hard time with while living in China and Taiwan.  The group had just finished a performance last Friday, so last night was the first rehearsal before the Dec.3rd concert so I joined at the right time:)

Here’s some info about the symphony and how you can help and support this wonderful community orchestra. See you at our next concert!!:)

Livermore-Amador Symphony Website

One of the ways I’m getting myself involved in our community is by attending a local community orchestra.  I’ve moved back to the states for a little over 4 months now and one of my goals for myself was to try and get involved in an orchestra by the end of next year.  The reason I kept going with violin lessons when I was young was because I was a part of the school orchestra, Denver Young Artist Orchestra, the All-State Orchestra, Weekend For Strings, and the National High School Orchestra as a senior in high school.  All of these activities kept me wanting to practice my violin everyday and made me want to improve so I can do more ‘cool’ tricks on the violin.

With that in mind, I contacted the Livermore-Amador Symphony and it turns out I can go to their rehearsal next Tuesday night and hopefully I can be a part of this group long term:) I love playing and I am happy to be a part of a music loving community:)

Our family decided to perform a piece together for everyone and our son Austin just LOVED watching himself play the violin when I played the video back to him:) My husband hasn’t touched violin in over 15 years, so I gave him the easiest part out of the 3 parts…hehe

Enjoy!!!

First performance for my students this year is going to be at Questa Elementary School in Mountain House, CA on Oct.28th, 7pm. Come join us for some booth games, bouncy house, haunted house, and Trunk or Treat!

On another note, I have recently found an awesome detailed video blog on http://www.violinlab.com that I highly recommend for students who have private lessons but want to follow something at home while they are practicing.

~Keep Violinin’

I taught the students ‘The Ant Poem’ to introduce them to the 4 strings on the violin. They really enjoyed learning the poem and singing with me while I plucked the strings:)

Austin and I loved performing for his class:

Thank you very much!!!!!

I’ve been asked by Austin’s teacher to give a 30 minute lesson on the violin and just getting the kids exposed to how violin is played and what it sounds like:) I have some exciting lesson plan for the kids tomorrow that I think they’ll all enjoy:) I’m very excited to share the love I have for the violin to the children tomorrow!!!!:D Life is good here in Mountain House, CA!!!!

Here are two different pictures of my beginner students’ bow holds:) Remember to always have a bent thumb and curled pinky, or 1 bump thumb and 2 bump pinky.  I normally take a picture for my beginner students so when they go home they can refer to their own picture of their correct posture.  These are a couple pictures of my students’ bow holds.

Enjoy:)

Musical ability is not an inborn talent but an ability which can be developed. …The potential of every child is unlimited.  ~Dr. Shinichi Suzuki

Many parents that I have talked with normally don’t believe in the above statement. Most of the time the parent would say that if a child is good at a musical instrument, it’s because he/she inherited some kind of musical gene or was just born with it….I strongly encourage parents to read Nurtured by Love or Ability Development from Age Zero by Shinichi Suzuki to understand why we should send our children to music lessons or let them learn a musical instrument at an early age.

I’ve started individual customized lesson plans for my students and it has helped me become even more organized:) I was going to have a master lesson plan, but I noticed as I started teaching, each and every student is different.  Some students learn really fast and can grasp the concept very quickly, while other students(most of the time younger ones) may need me to find all sorts of ways to help him/her with one specific technique.  Writing out a lesson plan for each of them really has helped me think about how I can improve my teaching and help me become more efficient during my class time.

Austin just started working on Variation B from the twinkles, and we’ve been working mostly on the use of his pinky on the bow hand.  I liked how when I was in the Suzuki Book I training, Dr. Baer told us about the ‘roles’ of our fingers and she called our index finger ‘the boss’.  However, in violin playing, it can’t be ‘the boss’ because we don’t want our hand to become pronated but rather more balanced. Austin loved hearing about the names of each finger and its role in holding the bow correctly.  I was never taught this way when I was young, and I just find these names so helpful with teaching kids and it really has helped him understand what exactly I wanted him to do.