The "Do Something Hard" Challenge

We are almost to the end of our “Do Something Hard” Challenge!  As I said on Sunday, the boys have been working all week to practice their current violin piece 100 times.  I was a little nervous about how things would go this week, especially when I decided to announce the challenge on our blog and invite others to join in with their own challenges!

Thankfully, the boys did really well.  We had our ups and downs this week, but they did much less complaining than I thought they would.  Both boys picked up their instruments multiple times to work on the challenge without me asking.  Aidan also noticed on the second day, “I used to have this hard part, and I can already play it without thinking about it!”

As of this morning, Gresham needs to play his song 16 more times (he has completed 84), and Aidan needs to play his 19 more times (he has completed 81).  They have until tomorrow morning to finish!  Then, I’ll award the prize money (10 cents for each time they played it), and we’ll go shopping!

I think that the prize definitely helped.  It would have been hard to get them to practice 100 times just for the sake of being able to play violin better, but I’m hoping that completing the challenge will help them see what they can do!  I also think that the experience of finishing something hard is good for them.  Learning an instrument is definitely a cycle – those who practice more, sound better.  Those who sound better are motivated to practice more because playing is enjoyable!

Here are “before” and “after” videos of Gresham’s piece:  “Song of the Wind” from Suzuki Violin School Volume 1.

(The before video is awful quality… just trying to get the sound and I didn’t want to make him do it over and over for me!)

Now it’s your turn! Link up and tell us what your family did this week for the “Do Something Hard” Challenge, or if you don’t have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you did. We would love to hear about it!