What should my child’s practice routine look like?

I get questions like this all the time and if my response may help you or your student, here’s a recent one.

As far as a practice routine goes, I recommend most students that are beyond the very beginning stages (they are reading on the staff and playing scales) to have at least a basic routine of something like this:

• 5-10 minutes working scales, this includes those they know and have known, and then the one they are learning.
• 5-10 minutes working on the song(s) that they are working on. This means not just playing through the song and being done, but often taking individual parts note by note, rhythm by rhythm as needed until the student can play it repeatedly accurately, then playing the whole song, hopefully nailing those parts–but over time they will certainly improve if doing this. Sometimes we have more challenging works to learn. This includes lesson and technic books, other music, etc.
• 5-10 minutes of free playtime, improvisation, just having fun.

For further reading, you may find this helpful 

I have some videos on the YouTube channel that may be helpful for having more fun with

practice, like this one.