Does your young child taking piano lessons or your piano student pause at each bar line in the music? Would you like to see them play through their music without these unnecessary interruptions? Heres a simple way to help your child overcome the habit of stopping or pausing at the bar lines.

Here is a demonstration you can give your child, even if you dont play the piano that will explain how the music should be played. Remember that when you child sees this demonstration they will stop pausing at the bar lines. So dont worry or nag your child, or criticize their playing. Just perform this demonstration and they will get it.

Youll need a large pitcher of water, several small Dixie cups, and a kitchen sink. Pour water from the pitcher into a Dixie cup. Then stop and put the cup down and fill another Dixie cup. Then stop and pick up another Dixie cup and fill it. Do this four or five more time. Then ask your child in piano lessons to imagine that the water in the pitcher is a song of music that they are playing. In order to pour out the whole song into Dixie cups you would have to stop pouring the water when each cup is full and put it down and pick up another cup to till it, etc., until all the pitcher was empty or the song was finished. If you imagine that each bar line and new measure is another Dixie cup to pour your song into youll have to stop at every measure to get another cup to fill. But we dont pour music into Dixie cups do we? So we dont need to pause at the bar lines.

Now pour all the Dixie cups of water back into the pitcher and show your student how to pour out the music when they play. Lift the pitcher high and gently pour out all of the water until the pitcher is empty. Take your student at home back to the piano to hear their song and as your child is playing, explain they dont have to pause at the bar lines or each measure like they are Dixie cups. Just let the music your are playing pour right past the bar lines until you get to the end of the song and all the music on the page has been poured out.

Try this at home and I guarantee your child will flow through their music and remember the lesson of how to pour out the musical pitcher of water so that the music flows right past the bar lines.

Cynthia VanLandingham

Cynthia VanLandingham's Piano Adventure Bears Music Education Resources create an exciting musical adventure for children ages 5 to 11. Visit PianoAdventureBears.com for free samples of her Piano Adventure Story Books and piano resources for children. She is also the author of The Wonder Guide to Creativity.

Cynthia has been teaching piano in Tallahassee, Florida for 20 years and is the owner of TallyPiano & Keyboard Studios. She is a member of the American College of Musicians National Guild of Piano Teachers, the President of TallyPiano Enterprises, LLC, and a graduate of the Florida State University College of Education. Visit her website at TallyPiano.com to download her original, uplifting piano compositions, including "The Potter's Wheel." While you're there subscribe to her free internet newsletter, Piano Matters, and read the Wonder Guide to Creativity Online.

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