Taking the Summer Off? Think Twice

Ah, summertime! Long, lazy days at the beach. No schedule to stick to. Sounds great, doesn't it. Now what if you are a student spending the entire school year studying an instrument? You take weekly guitar lessons or piano lessons and then summer comes. You decide to take the summer off. Relaxing, yes. Smart? Maybe not. Especially if we are talking about a child. Taking two months off from studying an instrument most likely will result in losing skill. When the student resumes music lessons in the fall, the first two months will be spent relearning skills that were lost. Now what if the student never took the summer off and instead relaxed his or her approach to the lessons. What if the teacher used the summer to expand on skills already taught but maybe not mastered? What if the practice schedule was modified instead of the lesson schedule? I would venture to say the student would continue to learn and love music. And the fall would be a productive time of new learning, not relearning.