By Tanya Hoida

A young child curves her fingers around a wooden ruler with four strings stretching down to a macaroni box cut open to resemble a violin. The child has to learn how to properly hold this box violin and memorize the rhythms of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" before she earns a real violin in the Suzuki music program.

"This is a good enrichment program activity and it exposes her to different music," said Amy Sanderson, parent of 8-year-old Rachel, a student in the UW-Oshkosh Suzuki program.

The university’s Suzuki program, based on the methodology of Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, focuses on teaching music to young children with consistent lessons including the child’s parents.

"The degree to which a child learns is to the degree the parents are involved to learn and understand their child," said Everett Goodwin, director of the Oshkosh program. "Suzuki used the Mother-Tongue Approach. He said mother is the real teacher."

Suzuki was an educator who studied violin in Japan and Germany in the 1920s. His method, introduced to the United States in 1958, derives from the basic principles of how a child learns a language.

"Dr. Suzuki noticed how a 3-year-old boy would learn to speak and how he could apply that to the music of a violin," Goodwin said. "Early on, the child learns the tunes so well, he doesn’t need to read music. This is just as a 6-year-old learns 2,000 words to speak before learning to read, by repeating and seeing the mouth move."

Heidi Basford-Kerkhof, secretary of the program, is the mother of two Suzuki students. Her 7-year-old son Joseph has played Suzuki violin since he was 3 years old. He practices 45 minutes and listens to the Suzuki music CD twelve times everyday.

UW-Oshkosh Suzuki violin instructor Kathy Roché said the repetition of music is necessary because the rhythms in songs such as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" appear again in more difficult pieces and the repetition will enable the child to remember these rhythms.

Sanderson’s daughter Rachel has played Suzuki violin since she was 4 years old. She has graduated to the second book of Suzuki music and began to read notes in February.

"The pieces are harder and longer (in Book Two) but note reading is starting to get easier," Rachel said.

Roché said she believes the students should understand the pitches before reading notes or they will be overwhelmed with what they have to learn later.

A total of 80 families with 115 children are enrolled in the program introduced 25 years ago by Geraldine Grine, wife of music department chair James Grine. By the mid-1980s, the Suzuki instructors taught violin, piano and cello.

Goodwin said the program’s 16 children in the late 1970s grew to at most 125 students in recent years. The program has two full-time instructors for violin and cello, and a part-time piano instructor, Santha Goodwin. The violin instructors, Goodwin and Roché, have full schedules and a waiting list of about 15 children. Goodwin said they are pushing for more Suzuki cello students for instructor Nancy Kaphaem.

Anna Heike, 14, has played cello since she was 4 years old. She said she has continued her cello training because she likes playing with her friends, and the consistent practicing and lessons help her polish the pieces more. She plans to try to continue the program even after high school graduation.

With older students graduating from high school and some moving from home, registration will open this summer for those on the waiting list or other newcomers ready to commit to the program, Goodwin said.