To stop the child playing near the frog, put a sufficiently large piece of wood in the tunnel of the bow, so that the wrist does not touch the strings.
Sometimes the teacher has to be firm. There are very few children who do not always play near the frog: the problem is that if they do this for long, they get into the habit of bringing their bow shoulder forward.
The U is a way to stop pupils playing on the fingerboard, and a strip of aluminium is threaded through the strings and held on the bridge by a clothes peg.
The teacher should help the pupil to imagine the bow to be a “longboat” loaded with sand or coal, going right up the middle of the river, not along the banks (fingerboard).
An elastic band is put around the bow fingers, but also imprisons the index finger: it is an excellent remedy if children’s fingers edge up the bow.
I called it “Marco’s elastic band”, because to stop this child from letting his fingers work their way up and down the bow, I wound it around the button.
