Handbell Toolbox
8. Teaching handbells
8.2. The first lesson
Everyone must have good rhythm and handling but then differentiation is important.
How you start and how you progress depends on the needs of the individual ringer and the capabilities of the supporting band. There is no standard handbell ringing pathway.
Some will make huge strides very quickly and some intermediate steps can be bypassed. Some lack confidence at the beginning and need to be guided slowly via. small easily-achievable steps. Some have lots of knowledge of method structure; others don't.
Here are some suggestions for how you might introduce handbell ringing to different people.
Child learner
Games, call changes, walk-through
Adult with no tower experience
Rhythm exercises, rounds and tunes
Tower bell call change ringer
Plain Hunt with one bell
Tower bell method ringer
Plain Hunt Minor learning the three basic patterns
Conducts peals of surprise
Tenors to Plain Bob Minor
Starting with minimus
When introducing ringing two bells, a good starting point for young children or those lacking in confidence is to ring on four rather than six bells.