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The big push in the past few months has been to find a balance between more autonomy and responsibility for Erin in her practising, and the ...

All I can say is it's lucky we're homeschooling. Music is taking up a lot of time, especially as Erin's piano abilities have beg...

This is a post I discovered in my e-mail "sent" file on September 1, 2007. It was written over five years previously. I've cop...

Things just keep rolling along for Erin. She's got a nice, stable vibrato now and is shifting easily. She's wrapped up her first pol...

Erin took her violin to the local agricultural fair ("Buskers Welcome" said the posters) and played her review repertoire for abou...

Two weeks ago Erin moved onto a really nice eighth-sized violin and is really enjoying the depth and clarity of tone the new instrument is ...

Big news, of a magnitude that I wasn't even aware of until I realized my last contribution here was just two months ago. Erin's left...

Things are continuing to move ahead for Erin at a rewarding, steady pace. She's working on Beethoven Minuet now and is looking forward ...

So far so good! We returned home, made the switch to a tenth-sized instrument, and have established a routine of daily practising. The focus...

During the fall we managed only sporadic lessons. As a result, practising was a struggle for a couple of months. Then Erin decided the time ...

By mid-spring, Erin was showing some interest in re-mastering some of her more challenging review repertoire. We began working gingerly toge...

It's mid-morning and Erin and Noah are playing with Duplo. They have built something they are calling a "mooseum...

Throughout the winter, Erin has done very little practising, but has still played her violin for pleasure regularly. Several times a week sh...

We began the fall by establishing a routine of regular weekly lessons with Erin's grandmother. For a few weeks this worked quite well. E...

Well, we've marked our first anniversary on the violin. We're back from the institute. It was nice to see familiar faces and I was p...

My little performer performed a beautiful Twinkle Theme at our spring recital last week. Her first recital, a "Twinkle Graduation"...

I keep expecting the bubble to burst. We have been rollicking along for almost four months now. The routine is established, progress is occu...

We've moved up to a sixteenth-size violin. The tailpiece on the thirty-second-size cracked, and it has proved impossible to find a repla...

I'm wondering where we went so wrong last fall. I didn't appreciate how hard it would be to get a home routine established, and I gu...

We are developing quite a routine the past week or two! We are finally, for about the first time ever, managing to practise more than once o...