Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of knowing me before 7:30 AM knows I HATE mornings. Perhaps it’s because I stay up quite late and morning arrives freakishly fast in my world. Perhaps it’s because neither of my children slept through the night until they were three and I’m still recovering. Perhaps it’s because I’m in a heat-induced coma wrapped in my beloved electric blanket…
Whatever the reason, I am not a morning person.
But, I’m turning over a new leaf along with my piano students. Armed with the printables I’m sharing in today’s post, you and your piano students will be able to embrace mornings too. And here’s why…
The Magic of Morning Piano Practice
I’m always looking for ways to maximize practice time in the busy lives of my students. This is no easy task, because kids who are involved in piano lessons are typically kids who are also involved in sports, art, drama, and dance. Pile on the fact that all of these time-stealing activities take place after school (prime piano practice time) and you’ve got yourself a problem.
I was in Grade 11 (at exactly the same time I met my most massive time-stealer… Trevor) when I realized there was no way I was going to accomplish anything with my piano if I didn’t practice. And with homework, singing lessons, musical theatre, sports and… Trevor… it truly was impossible to get anything done after school or in the evenings.
So I did the one thing I absolutely hated to do; I got up earlier to practice piano. And it did wonders for my progress.
Why does morning practice work?
- Studies have shown that sleep directly (and positively) affects the learning of a fine motor skill. We actually did an interview with Dr. Karen Debas on this topic.
- No matter how many activities your students have scheduled after school, morning practice ensures their piano is never forgotten, crammed in or done haphazardly. Frenzied or rushed practice results in negativity towards the piano, practice fights with parents and other things we piano teachers would rather avoid.
- The excuse of “no time” is completely eliminated. With a simple adjustment to the morning alarm, your piano students can have all the time they need.
- The discipline of getting up early and practicing every day establishes habits that are pro-active and that will carry over into other areas of your students’ lives as well.
- The likelihood of parental involvement in practice increases, as your students no longer practice alone while parents are at work, driving siblings to other activities etc.
- As your students become teenagers, homework, jobs, friends and other extracurricular activities no longer pose a threat to their piano progress (none of those things happen in the morning!)
- Parents who see regular practice occurring are less likely to “pull the plug” on lessons due to life being chaotic and practice not happening. The parental “guilt” from daily practice being repeatedly forgotten is eliminated, taking one more stressor away from busy families.
- Starting a day off with music starts your students’ days with all of the wonderful benefits that music has been proven to provide such as mood improvement, stress-reduction, and mental alertness.
All of these factors combined means morning piano practice is one of the most powerful ways you can ensure that your piano students are practicing and progressing.
How To Make The Change?
So, if you’re convinced that the solution to your piano students’ practice woes lies in the magic of morning practice, then you’re just left with one little bitty problem… motivating your piano students to rise early!
How do you get them to make this change?
With a fun event!
We love sharing piano practice incentives… but one this is different; it’s about making the change to morning practice a memorable and fun event that will inspire your piano families to happily give it a try!
You’ll need the printables below to make it happen!
Announcement poster – Ramp up the excitement with piano studio decorations, posters and a big announcement on your Facebook page. The bigger deal you make about this (and the more fun you make it seem!) the more participation you will receive. Here’s a poster you can use.
Piano Pajama Day Activities – This is an exciting way to kick off the event and is a great way to get everyone in your studio involved. Invite your students to attend lessons in their pajamas and give some of our lesson activity suggestions a try!
The Morning Practice Sheet and Parent Info – This is the sheet your students will take home to track their week of morning practice and to let the parents know all about the event. It’s a fun way to encourage your piano families to take the plunge and set that morning alarm a bit earlier.
The Pledge of Morning Mastery – Finish off the week by having your students sign the Morning Practice Pledge, vowing to practice in the mornings at least 3 times a week. Post these in your studio as a regular reminder for students each week.
Wahoo for Mornings… I’m Off To Bed
To make this more fun for my students, I too am participating during our One Week of Morning Practice. I’ll be sending out encouraging group texts in the early morning hours each day during that week and I’ve also pledged to hit the piano myself every morning that week as well.
So, because I won’t be able to push “snooze” on my alarm 14 times like I usually do… I’m off to bed!
LOVE! I’m always trying to encourage morning practise–great activities! I should also participate myself, I agree with everything you said in your first paragraph and I think colder weather is worsening my heat-induced coma you mentioned!:)
I love the idea of having an event with print outs etc. It makes it more “official” , however, my over scheduled kids are typically middle and high school when clubs and sports etc start in earnest! In my town the bus picks up as early as 6:00 in the morning. For this age group they do not do well in the morning. Asking them to get up earlier is impossible. Perhaps on weekends but weekdays are really not an option. Any suggestions?
6:00 is early! 🙂 I’m encouraging even my older kids to get up early just for this one week…. even just for 20 minutes. It won’t won’t kill them… and I know for a fact (because they’re texting me!) that they’re still awake at 11:30, 12:00 at night… so I’ve said they can simply go to bed earlier and get up 20 minutes earlier. I got some groans, but they like me so they’ll do it! LOL. I do have some high school students who take their music to school and practice on the school piano in flex blocks or at lunch. It works really well for them – maybe that’s a suggestion for your middle and high school kids?
Thanks, Andrea,
Your ideas are infused with creativity and love- two essentials for great teachers!
Thank you Karen – this means a lot!
My son used to practice mornings until high school. Couple of my motivated students do it too. But for most of them it would be impossible, because their parents are in the rush too. But I definitely should do it myself, because my own practice takes a back seat to everything else.
Morning practice is what got me to where I am today! I couldn’t start practicing until the whistle blew at 7 a.m. It didn’t hurt that it was a little bit fun to aggravate my younger sister by waking her up at that time, either!
It might work for some elementary school students with motivated parents. I have a student who comes for her lesson at 7:45am before school and another 3rd grader who practices in the morning. I should take that advice for myself, because my own practice takes a backseat to everything else.
I would like to include on the time tracker the time they fell asleep, so if they are missing a day of practice, you may be able to show that they did not get to bed early enough or fall asleep early enough. They need to have their parents take away their gadgets so they aren’t wasting time on social media, etc. and not falling asleep. I also expect 2 hours every day of practice for my serious students and 1 hour for the younger ones; almost half the their practice time is technique, scales, exercises etc.
One more issue, is early morning others in the home may be asleep. The solution is a good (less expensive) 88 weighted key Yamaha electric piano starting at $600 new, much less on ebay. Headphones and built in metronome solve the problem.
Great points David and yes… for all those kids who “didn’t have time” – I often ask how much time they spent playing Minecraft… it’s funny to see the realization of “Oh… I could have been playing the piano instead then…” Our own family is big on no screen time for our kids – but it’s a tough go to change the habits of others. Gentle nudges like this event and suggestions to the kids themselves can sometimes bring about change – even if just for a few! 🙂
This is a great time to promote this! For some of us, daylight savings time is coming up at the end of the month. If the kids continue to get up at the “same time” their body is used to, they will actually be getting up one hour earlier according to the clock.
Brilliant Elizabeth – didn’t even think of this aspect!
What about the student who is truly overbooked? I had one student who was so busy she would get out of school at three and do all sorts of activities until late at night (sometimes she would not get to bed until 11! And she was 11 herself) and then she had to be up at 6 for the bus to come at 6:30. She would drag herself to lessons absolutely exhausted with huge dark circles under her eyes. To ask this girl to give up sleep would have been wrong. Anyone else have/had a student like this?
Hi Paige – I feel so sorry for kids like this. Is she already finding time to practice somehow? Maybe this isn’t her solution and perhaps she’s already found a time that works for her? If not, then maybe a conversation with her parents about helping her to find a time that does work reliably would be helpful in that a) they may realize that she actually truly doesn’t have time and some changes may need to happen to accommodate piano or b) they can hammer out a reliable practice time (whether or not it is mornings). This makes me sad – childhood is so short… it’s a shame that some kids spend the majority of their young years in the car being driven to activities – none of which they will fully master as they simply don’t have the time to dedicate to them.
Both of my kids have practiced before school for years. We also do their lessons before school. We love it! I have often encouraged parents to consider having students practice in the morning and have found the parents are not willing to make the change. 🙁 Hopefully this will help more to make the change to morning. 🙂
Hi Jennifer – I know… that convincing part is a tricky one. However, I think that if you make it a big event and clearly show why you think it’s important… it’s hard for them to ignore it and not participate 😉 My hope is that, after a week of seeing their kids practice every single day (and it will be hard to dispute the progress that will be made because of this) that they’ll see the short bit of sleep they may miss out on is worth it! Earlier to bed is healthier anyway, yes?! Maybe we’ll be positively affecting the physical health of our piano parents as well 😉
When I was growing up, I had to practice 2 hours a day by the time I was in 7th or 8th grade. Because I was involved in everything in school (musicals, band, pom poms), I started getting up 1 hour early. I would get that 1 hour in and then only have 1 hour left to practice after school. I loved it, and I’m sure my piano students will too. Thanks for these practice incentives. You and Trevor rock!
Thank you for your kind words Linda! I hope that this makes a difference to your piano kids. Happy to hear you yourself had already discovered the magic of morning practice 🙂
Morning practice is amazing. I get up at 5 every morning to practice, even though I don’t want to. and then I feel amazing the rest of the day! I can’t wait to try this incentive with my students!
Wow Amy – you are disciplined! Getting into those habits is so valuable – as unappealing as they may sound… the more you do it the easier it gets! I run in the dark every single night at 9:00pm. It was hard to get started, but now it’s just a part of my day and I know that I can get my run in no matter what happens during the day. I’m hoping we can help piano students to adopt this habit and, even though it’s hard to get out of bed… the payoffs in knowing practice happens no matter what are huge! 🙂
I started teaching piano when I was in college and the lifestyle of families today is so different from the late 80’s and even early 90’s. Children need some down time to run in the sunshine and play in the dirt. I love it when a young student shows up with a little dirt under his or her nails. Quite often parents think of athletics and dance as play time but that is different from unstructured creative play and for children that is restorative and feeds their creative energies. I’ve mentioned morning practice to several parents but I’m always told their 2nd or 3rd grader is doing hours of homework every night and already not getting enough sleep. Unfortunately, a lot of times the homework is nothing more than busy work assigned to an entire class when some students would benefit from doing something different in the evenings. I wish there was a way to creatively work with teachers and schools to allow piano practice to cover some of the homework in areas where a student is doing well. Read a blog post not long ago where a parent writes to the teacher at the beginning of every school year stating, “we don’t do homework.” Her child is doing great and isn’t penalized and the school works with her and respects her position. I’ve not known of other parents who have tried this but I do find it interesting….
I very much agree with you Jan. Somewhere along the line, a shift in thinking happened where children who were engaged in many extracurricular activities were assumed to be better off in life than those who had free time. I agree that free time is so important – learning through play is still a valued concept and practice in early childhood education (and I think it should be throughout childhood too). Morning practice leaves time for kids to just be kids after school – unstructured time is so important. And what’s really cool is that, because my own daughter does her practice before school, she then often will drift over to the piano for “free play” on the piano after school. I don’t feel the need to re-direct her because she’s already done her “work” and she has time to simply enjoy making fun sounds on the piano. If more kids had this opportunity I think we’d see such blossoming creativity. All we can do is make suggestions and give it our best shot with our students – if we can convince even just a few to adopt morning practice then I think we’re a giant step ahead! 🙂
I think homework is crazy!!! After being in school for 7 hours they have to come home and do more school work??? How did this happen? I admire the person who told the school “we don’t do homework”, but I can’t imagine schools in my area allowing that, since often, homework is included in their grades. I so agree with everyone who has posted here that children need more free, unstructured time.
I was my families alarm clock growing up. Always the first one up to start practicing. It was the best time to practice.
Luckily my piano was in the basement, two floors below all the bedrooms. It was cold down there in the winter but no one complained when I got up to do an hour of technique before volleyball all through highschool. Now, however, all the highschools around here seem to have jazz band at 7 am.
Lots of demands on kids’ time these days isn’t there Colleen! Even at 7am 🙂