G-bear's guitar

I am studying the benefits of play-based early childhood music education over performance-based.  So, this topic is on my mind a lot.  And I get to see some of it exhibited in my children's experience.  Suzuki is kind of a tricky approach to evaluate.  I have had people say, "Suzuki. . . that's very focused on performance."  I can see why they say that, because there is a lot of performance involved.  But, like many things, it depends heavily on the teacher.  I think you can experience performance in a playful way.  Do I have you confused yet?  Anyway, G-bear's first guitar performance was tonight, and it went well.  She was a tad nervous when she saw the stage and the audience.  But, she grinned through the performance, and was proud at the end.  That's what matters.  I think performance in young kids becomes harmful when the focus is on pleasing the audience instead of feeling an inner pride.  It's harmful when a child learns to look to the people judging him or her for approval or acceptance. It is healthy when a child can understand that s/he has worked hard and achieved something, and feel pride.  In our experience, this is what Suzuki is about.  Yes, they talk about training, and performing, which are words that make me cringe (when we're talking about early childhood).  But, somehow they are not focused on perfection of a task in order to gain approval by an external source, whether it's the parent or the audience.  So, while Suzuki may involve lots of playing with and for other people, I don't think it's focused on performance in a harmful way.  Tonight at the concert, the parents stood directly in front of the kids who were pre-twinklers, and were experiencing their first concert.  I appreciated this, because it really seemed to ease the kids into the idea of being on stage and playing in front of other people.  Mali took some pictures of G-bear playing.