What Teachers are Saying
The violin is a uniquely challenging instrument for children. Kaleidoscopes now makes it accessible to children at an early age without the struggle and monotony of traditional violin methods.
Being a Kaleidoscopes teacher is extremely meaningful for me. It gives me immense joy to discover a new method to help my students thrive.
The tunes in Kaleidoscope Book 1 are quickly learned and mastered than Suzuki Book 1. This helps build my student’s confidence and keeps them motivated. It is easier for me to sing with my students, show them their progress, and have a huge collection of folk tunes added to my teaching repertoire. My young students seem to enjoy accomplishing short folk tunes rather than a little section of a bigger piece that may take months to learn.
Teachers and parents will appreciate that the method and books are very thorough and organized. This method is great for students and parents who like step by step learning. The books give excellent information for parents on everything related to learning the violin – practice games, posture pictures, explanations of exercises, violin care, etc.
Being able to sing on pitch and accurately hear what you want to play on the violin is invaluable. My students now learn to play these pieces on piano and the transposition helps them understand both instruments better.
What I love about Kaleidoscopes is that a lot of focus was put on the language and mind of young students. I like how the pre-Twinkle exercises help get the students used to the ‘awkward’ positions of the violin.
Suzuki is always a go-to when it comes to early violin playing, but the Pre-Twinkle exercises make Kaleidoscopes the new go-to!
Learning some music theory along with keyboard skills is fun and ties in with the solfegge aspect of the Kaleidoscopes series. The lively and musical CD helps students learn moveable “do” because the pieces are sung with lyrics, in solfegge and played on the violin. Playing the book one pieces in more than one key bridges simply playing by rote and rudimentary music theory. They enjoy the selection of folk music and know many of the songs from their elementary and preschool music classes.
Many students are able to play a new piece almost every week right from the beginning. This gives the students, parents and teachers a feeling of progress which is self motivating and helps to make lessons and practicing a joyful experience.
I am an elementary general music teacher and fiddler, and have taught three different after school fiddle clubs for the last 20 years. I LOVE this method of violin instruction.
What Parents Are Saying …
Suzuki Book 1 has long songs, and it takes forever to graduate one song, and by the time you graduate, some students may lose interest in it. And if it’s boring you don’t want to practice. And then it doesn’t motivate them.
But for Amy I think Kaleidoscopes worked really well, because they’re all short songs, you can move really fast, and you can assign more than one song, that was also another motivation for her.
Kate woke me up at 7:00 this morning to practice violin. And I was like, “Right now?”
What Students Are Saying …
But in Kaleidoscopes you do one, you maybe learn something new then work on it in one, maybe a couple other songs and then get something new. So I think it is easier that way.
Suzuki was was like a chore. My parents would have to force me to practice, they would be like, “Come on, practice, practice,” and I would make excuses and cry. It was all note-perfect stuff, and I didn’t even learn to read music.
When I started on Kaleidoscopes I enjoyed violin more and it wasn’t such a chore to practice anymore. What made the difference was playing music that I actually liked, and working on interpretation, and reading the music and learning different techniques.
The songs are alot more fun. In Kaleidoscopes, the songs paint pictures in your head. I just really like this book and this method.
I think this book helped widen my range of technical and interpretation capabilities of the music.
Everything really changed for me when I was 10 years old and I came to Kaleidoscopes. It really changed the way I feel about the instrument. I love violin now, so much.
But in Kaleidoscopes you do one, you maybe learn something new then work on it in one, maybe a couple other songs and then get something new. So I think it is easier that way.
