Practicing Piano at Home

Hi, I have a 5 years old that I just placed in piano lessons. Her lessons last 20 min once a week, we practice 5-10 minutes 5 days a week twice a day. My daughter gets up really early in the mornings, so we definitely use that time for 5-10 min practice. Afternoons are harder, since we are a bit late form work and early bedtime, but we try to squeeze another 5-10 min. I know the serious teachers want the kid to practice an hour.... oh well... I guess if she will not grow up to be like Bach - I will be just fine :)

Hi D!
I teach piano and if it's a struggle to do more than 10 minutes then ONLY do that. To a 6 year old (I have a 6 year old boy!) 10-15 minutes at an instrument can be an eternity!
What does the teacher recommend? You can always split the time and do 5 min. a few times per day. But, at the end of the day, you know what will frustrate your child and what will benefit him.

My daughter's first piano teacher that she got in third grade was really old and old school so she pretty much demanded 45min to an hour a day. That was nearly impossible for my daughter and had her sorely disliking piano after a few months. She's in sixth grade now and if we get in 20-30 minutes a day, then I consider that pretty good. As long as I hear each day sounding a little better than it did the day before, then I'm satisfied with that amount of time. She started "The Entertainer" at her lesson on Tuesday and is already sounding much better so it's all good to me...so to answer your question, I'd say no more than ten-fifteen minutes...

During the school year, my 7 year old practices for 15 minutes each day on Sunday-Thursday only. I give her a break on Fri and Sat for the weekends. In the summer we practiced for 20 minutes a day since we had more time. She sets a timer so she knows exactly how long to practice. It works well for us and her piano teacher said that is appropriate for her age.

I used to teach many moons ago and I would say 15-20 minutes is par for that age. It doesn't have to be all at once either. You can split it into 5 or 10 minute segments. Whatever the attention span will allow.