Blog #1: What size are you?

 What Size are You?
Measuring for Your First Violin

Violins comes in 9 different sizes:

 4/4 (also called full size), 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16, and 1/32.

 4/4 size being the biggest and 1/32 size being the smallest. 

All adults, regardless of their size, use the 4/4 violin.

To measure what size violin best suits you, you need to know the length between your neck and the middle of your left-hand palm or left wrist.  This is measured when your hand is fully extended and raised perpendicular to your body, just like holding a violin.
 

About 50% of the teachers prefer students to use the length from the neck to the wrist for measurement instead of the neck to mid-palm approach. The violin size determined by the neck/wrist approach would be the size that is more comfortable for students to hold. The violin size determined by the neck/mid-palm approach would be the biggest size students should use.  When your child is right in between two sizes using the two different measuring methods, you should also consider that kids do go through growth phases and may outgrow a size in 6 months.  In that case, you may want to choose the larger size.

  
This is From: http://store.musicbasics.com/howtodetrigs.html
and 
 http://www.squidoo.com/beautiful-inexpensive-violin-for-beginners?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campaign=framebuster


Another way to determine what size violin is by their age, this method isn't as accurate because all children grow differently but in general seems to work.  
 VIOLIN SIZE             APPROX. AGE
1/16                                       3-5 years
1/10                                       3-5 Years
1/8                                         3-5 Years
1/4                                         4-7 Years
1/2                                         6-10 Years
3/4                                        9-11 Years
4/4 (Full Size)                  9- ADULT
  
If you are still confused on what size violin your child is, feel free to ask me questions or watch this YOUTUBE video. 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_MXpJGXHWU