Teaching Children to Play the Violin

The five basic steps are:
1 - Choosing the right instrument
2 - Tuning the violin
3 - Teaching your child how to hold the violin & bow.
4 - Teaching your child to get a great sound
5 - Making practice fun

Visit Teach Your Child Violin for more information.

When choosing a violin for your child, there are two main factors to consider:

* Size
* Quality

The most important thing to take into consideration when choosing a violin for your child is that the size is correct. Clearly a full size violin is not going to be right for a child. Therefore there are smaller violins specifically designed for children in sizes of: 1/16; 1/8; 1/10; 1/4; ½ & ¾.

One way of measuring your child for the right sized violin is to place the violin on their shoulder, under the chin, and to extend the child's arm so that the fingers curl around the scroll. In this position the arm should be slightly bent at the elbow. If it isn't then your child will need a smaller instrument.

The quality of the instrument is also something to consider, though with the smaller violins, I don't feel it to be so important. Clearly the better the quality you purchase, the better the sound will be, so my advice here is to buy the best quality you can afford. However there are some great little violins on the market these days for very reasonable prices.