Recalling Past Information

Author: Amanda Goodwin

Last year was my second year teaching violin to preschoolers. We started them off by teaching the parts of the instrument through a song (to the tune of a major scale); moved on to having them pluck the strings (with the violin on the ground) while singing another song to help them remember the string names; and finally we taught them how to get into playing position and using the bow.

For the first time since joining ArtistCorps, I have the opportunity to give music lessons to the kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classes. We started with the kindergartners, so I knew many of them from the previous year when they were preschoolers. We were doing a lesson on counting, so I took out a ukulele and had each student count the strings (this also helped me learn new names and remember any old names that I had forgotten). I noticed that the kids who had learned violin last year actually used their index fingers to pluck the string while counting rather than just pointing. I didn’t ask them to do so, they remembered how to do it from the previous year.

There was also a similar moment where one boy remembered information from the previous year. As I brought my bow to the string preparing to play, I hear the boy say "the hair!". After I finished playing I stopped the lesson to praise him for remembering what the white part of the bow was made of. Feeling encouraged, he offered up more information and said "it's greasy!". That wasn't quite correct though, so I had to remind him that the hair only gets greasy if you touch it because of the oils we have on our hands. I couldn't believe how much he remembered. It really made my day!