Violin String Names for Young Beginners | Printable Coloring Page

I've recently started to make some fun coloring pages for my young beginners as a take-home reenforcement for what they have been learning in the lessons. These are partly just for fun, but there is some educational benefit as well.

I'd like to share a free printable coloring page with you today. This coloring page helps teach the letter names of the violin strings using animals for each string, as follows:

G: Giraffe

D: Dolphin

A: Ape

E: Eagle

I chose these particular animals because I thought they would be familiar to most young kids. (I decided against using an eastern quoll.)

I also chose animals with beginning sounds similar to how the name of the actual letter sounds. For example, I chose giraffe (instead of gorilla) because it has a soft "G" at the beginning, similar to the way the name of the letter "G" is pronounced. I chose eagle (instead of elephant) because the beginning sound is a long "E", like we would pronounce the name of the letter. This seems to pose less confusion to very young pre-reading students who are not as familiar with alternative sounds that letters can make.

Additionally, I chose animals that might be useful in explaining the size relationship of the strings. For example, giraffes are very big and tall! Just like the G is the biggest string. Eagles are the smallest of those four animals, and E string is the smallest string. Also, Eagles fly way up high in the sky, and the E string note is way up high.

I hope your students enjoy this as much as mine have. I don't know any young kids who don't love coloring, and this is a great way to reenforce what was taught in the lesson and help the kids remember the names of the strings. Click here to download your own violin strings coloring page!

Enjoy!

DIY Nonslip Violin Foot Chart for Beginners

Hi, everyone! I'm excited to share this tutorial with you.

When I was four years old and just starting out on violin, I remember my mom cutting up a cardboard box and tracing my feet in rest and play position so I could know just where to put them.

A nice thing about using a foot chart for young beginners, besides teaching the placement of the feet, is that it also helps creates a visible and tangible "boundary" for them. It's easy for kids to understand this is their violin mat, and that's where the students sits or stands during lessons and practice time. I think it helps with staying focused on the task at hand by not allowing them to get distracted and wander (especially with short attention spans of youngsters).

A disadvantage I saw first hand with the cardboard box route was that it was slippery. Whether on carpet or another surface, it can slip and slide, which is very dangerous.

As I thought about what would be a good solution, I decided to use a yoga mat! These are made for the very purpose of not allowing slippage!!

I went to my local Ross store and got a cute orange yoga mat on clearance for $8.50. It has zebra stripes on one side, but is plain orange on the reverse.

I figured out it was long enough to cut into three equal "almost" squares. They're about 24"x22.66".

Then I needed a model, so I found the closest, wiggliest three-year-old I could and traced her cute little feet with a permanent marker.

And that's it!

I love how it turned out. It's easy to roll up and transport to lessons, if needed, although I have one here in my studio to use. But I find some students are just so excited about their mat and their feet traced on it, that they like to bring their own to lessons.

And it's not slippery!

And it's cute and orange, not sad cardboard brown!

So I got three mats out of this one yoga mat, which means each mat only cost me under $3!

A note about positioning feet: Some teachers like rest position to be parallel feet, then the student has to "unzip" the fit to make the toes point outward, then move the left foot forward to play position. I learned as a young student to have my rest position feet not be parallel, but to already have the toes point outward and the heels touching. I've decided to continue teaching it this way because it makes sense to me to eliminate the extra "unzipping" step. I just wanted to put this note in here as an explanation, in case it differs from what you've used. Either way works great and it's up to you as the teacher to decide.

Go make your own and post pictures so I can see their cuteness. If I were feeling very adventurous, I might even let the student have at it with markers and decorate it themselves. Maybe on another day when fewer wiggles are involved.

Music Teachers Book Club September 2014

For my Music Teachers Book Club in June/July 2014, we read Principles of Violin Playing & Teaching by Ivan Galamian.

The next book we are reading for August/September 2014 is Nurtured by Love by Schinichi Suzuki.

Feel free to read along too and comment here with your thoughts on what you learned. How does it apply to your teaching? What was new to you? What did you agree or disagree with? I look forward to

hearing your thoughts.