violin lessons with Melissa

I've really been hesitant about violin lessons, and for good reason. See, we did our budget and we decided we could afford violin lessons for Melissa, but then we had a hole come up in our budget. My dad lost his cell for the 4th time in 2 years, and we decided that instead of renewing our contract (yes I know its not smart to have a phone for him on OUR account) and we decided not to renew our contract so that we could get him a new phone and number (the person that has his phone was making calls to Germany on his phone) This means that my father is no longer contributing to the cell phone bill, but we are counting it as a worthy cost to not have to worry if he has his phone or not any more.

So I'm teaching her violin myself. I am NOT one to teach my own kids an instrument, it just scares me. However, because of the change in budget, I have to teach her if she's going to learn for now. I'm sucking it up and working with her on it. We are reviewing the parts of the violin, how to hold instrument and bow properly, and sitting/standing properly each lesson and then doing a couple minutes of introducing the new concept or working on an existing concept, followed by Melissa practicing while I am there to correct her position and assist her with the concept we worked on. The current lesson is up and down bowing, pizz. playing (that's the fancy way of saying plucking instead of bowing) and open D and open A for notes. She's having a blast, we are doing different rhythms for playing right now and she loves the challenge of bowing the rhythm I clap for her to echo. She's got a pretty good ear for rhythm in fact, and is getting the concept rather quickly of bowing on one string at a time (except when the music says to play on two strings at once, which will come much later in lessons) I'm actually impressed with how well she's doing at violin lessons, especially since I am NOT a violin teacher. I much prefer to play instead of teaching, but this works for now.

I always SWORE that I would NEVER teach my own children how to play an instrument, that I knew my limits and that an instrument is my limit. Well, what happened to that limit? lol I'm still not teaching other peoples' kids though, I'm not sure I could handle that one. I'm a gifted classical musician, NOT a teacher.

You know what they say. Those who can, play. THose who can't, teach.