I've only ever taught pupils from grade 1+, but now have my first very beginner. She's 6, and very excited about playing the violin. She's had 4 lessons now and has a good bow hold and holds the violin nicely, and can play open strings from music. She makes a decent sound. She says the open strings are too easy, but I thought it was too early to introduce fingers so i introduced different rhythms instead. So we did minims and crotchets over the open strings, which she did quite easily.
She has NO concentration however and everything just bounces right off her head. She is really bored with open strings and moans about playing the open string exercises i give her because it's 'too easy'. Is it too soon to introduce 1st finger? this will be her 5th lesson and she started about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I wouldn't like to start it just yet because I want to make sure she has some solid foundations to start on and it feels a bit rushed, but I don't want her being bored and giving up.

Different teaching methods differ significantly in that regard. The Eta Cohen book uses fingers almost from the beginning, but sticks to only D and A strings for many, many weeks rather than introducing all the open strings. They do a lot of pizzicato finger work. I started my beginner with pizz in the banjo/guitar position for left hand work and bowing on open strings only. The banjo position is useful because the arm doesn't get as tired holding the instrument up in this unfamiliar position for extended periods, so we always did bowing work, finger work, bowing work, finger work. Then you move the pizz into the shoulder position without holding the bow. When both hands are absolutely solid you get to combine them together, which gives her a motivation to practice the things she's been given in order to get to where she wants to go.

Do you have a good selection of duets where she plays open strings and you play something more interesting? I found it kept my beginner ticking over better, the open string work did seem to go on for EVER!

If you don't think she's ready then don't give in or she'll be leading the way forever, but do motivate her by showing exactly what you want achieved and then you promise she can use fingers, but she will have to tick off this, this and that first, and to your standards. If she doesn't know how long the open strings might go on for then she may well get terribly frustrated.

I apologise firstly as I'm not a teacher, but a parent of children taught by the Suzuki method, which offered us an 'in at the deep-end' approach. The very first lesson I attended with my 7 year old, the violin was introduced with 'twinkles'. At the very end, the teacher handed us (all of us very non-musical parents) her own violin...and asked us to play the same, the point being to give us an idea of how hard things were likely to be for the children. Within the week, I bought a violin (dreadful, but adequate for the purpose) for 20-00 from ebay and I was able to learn alongside my daughter. I think the value of knocking out a few tunes from the very start was for us invaluable, as it got me involved... (and of course it was me that was guiding the practice).- and perhaps more importantly, it stopped me (the parent!) getting bored (I'm a stay-at-home-dad). Of course I was over eager and we rushed through lots of stuff we weren't really ready for, but it got us involved at the outset with the instrument...and we knew from the cd what it should sound like and even had the piano accompaniment. Time progressed and we had to unlearn a few things, but now the seed has been sown and after 3 years my daughter really has got the bug and just passed her grade 5 distinction. Just saying that from my perspective if you can make the initial few lessons progressive and can hammer out some kind of recognisable tune you can involve the parent- and for me that was the nub of the gist. I suspect if we had just trudged about sheet music and open strings, we may have both lost interest. Hope that was useful!

I love 'It's too easy' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

We're practising the violin so that playing it feels easy. I say this often. Then I might say...It's great that you are finding it easy! Well done! Good! Now we can work more on tone!

I would add fingers when I thought it was right and not be hassled into it by student or parent. I often do get my Y3 beginners to be able to play a fairly rough Jingle Bells for the end of the first term of lessons - it is important for them to be able to play a tune that other people can recognise! This comes at a price of course but I am happy to pay it.

Thanks for the advice
She went from saying It's too easy, to 'it's too complicated'... oh dear. But I think we have done all we can on open strings for now (i think she's had 5 lessons) so at the end of last lesson I introduced her to the idea of first finger, we were just plucking open E, F#, E, F# etc. then played it.
I was going for the 'teach her how to read notes and understand counting' approach but as a 6 year old with zero concentration, it was just going no-where so think it's better to get her going on her playing and think about the theory side a bit later!
I would have liked to have her understanding minims/crotchets/rests before using fingers, but If I start to try explain anything, rather than just having her do hands on practical things, she just switches off INSTANTLY and starts talking about the cat in the garden, the huge spider she saw yesterday, what her new shoes look like... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Not a criticism of her however, all kids are different and she certainly has creativity!!

You could try the reading thing the other way round?

So have her copy open string rhythms and then show her what she played written down?

I use rhythm words related to movement so my little ones are used to hearing me play (for example)

crotchet quaver quaver minim

and then playing it back while they (and I) SAY the movement words 'walk jogging str-ide'. I tell them it's important to SAY as well as play because it uses another bit of their brain. Later we just read and say rhythms from big A4 cards, then we make up rhythms using cards that each have 1 beat of rhythm on (the minim card is twice as long as the others). I try to teach loads rather than test, if that makes sense.

And yes! Have her DO things rather than talk about them - so clap, sing, move rhythms rather than get into 'this one is half a beat long' - abstract thought is hard for some little ones!

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And not just for little ones, either...

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Yes good point both!
I've abanonded words like 'crotchet, minim, quaver, half a beat, beat' - was all going over the top of her head. Now it's more along the lines of "Let's play the rhythm 'Mississipi hot dog' on the A string" "Play me 'Tinkerbelle is very tiny' followed by 'Apple pie, Apple pie'", good job I'm as crazy as the kids (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
I tried it with a slightly older girl, who has some troubles reading rhythms, so we took the Suzuki twinkle variations and made up words for the rhythm of each one, I let her choose her own words and we had some VERY unusual things going on, but she never forgot the rhythms (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)