How much is my child supposed to practice at home and how many days a week?

The short simple answer is – one should practice every day, otherwise the student will not develop good work ethics and the right attitude, and these are extremely important in every human’s activity. The amount of daily practice time depends on a few things: the age of the student, his/her musical abilities, and what the goals are. Here are some thoughts:

1. For a very young beginner (about 5 y.o.) 30 minutes a day broken into a number of short sessions would do. This way the start, the toughest period of study, would take shorter time.

2. By the end of the first year it could be at least 45 min to one hour a day – again, broken into shorter sessions. If you want your child to study the piano more seriously, so that by the end of the 1st year of study s/he could work simultaneously on a number of bigger pieces of the required classical repertoire, daily sessions could be longer. Have in mind that the student has to learn and practice musical theory as well.

3. After a few initial years some of devoted students can practice 3-5 hours daily. 🙂 Those can surely hope for a good college in the future.   

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