Grade 1-2 Archives - Page 8 of 43 - Berkshire Country Day School

General Music on Spotify!

As you may know, our Pre-K to 6th grade students get 2-5 blocks of music instruction each and every week. In addition to singing, playing instruments, and creative movement, we also incorporate opportunities for listening to various musics from around the world.

Thanks to the Kindergarten parents for requesting I share out my General Music PK-6 Spotify playlist. Feel free to put this on in the car or whenever the desire arises. Most BCD kids will recognize the tracks, although some are more subtly used as background” or “transition” music. Also, feel free to check back throughout the year as our listening repertoire grows!

Musically Yours,

Mr. Martin

By BCD Blog|2016-09-23T12:06:00-04:00September 23rd, 2016|

Early September in Grade 1-2

Dear Families,

Your children have accomplished so much in the short amount of time that we have been in school!
They are a delight to work with and we have been very impressed with their positive attitudes and
enthusiasm for learning.

As we begin the year, we are busy learning about each other. Our social studies and writing units
have aided in this. From thinking about their hopes and dreams for this year, to creating “Me”
books and acrostic poems about themselves, to drawing self-portraits, we have gotten to know each
other better over the last eight school days.

Our science unit on oceans began with a “tell us what you already know” session. From this
information we are then able to focus our study on those topics they are less familiar with. Our first science lesson was actually an experiment testing the differences between fresh and salt water. Ask your child what happened to the egg in salt water versus fresh water and more importantly, why it happened that way. Next, we talked about the colors of the ocean and why we see the colors we see.

We then had the children mix their own shades of blue and green with water colors. Once they had
painted their ocean, they then sprinkled their painting with salt and the results were fabulous.
We look forward to sharing all of their work with you next Wednesday evening at “Back-to- School
Night” here on campus. The children will be writing letters for you to read that night, so if you will not be able to attend, please let us know in person or via email: kallentuck@berkshirecountryday.org or klindsay@berkshirecountryday.org. If you will not be there, one of us will write back to your child and we will be sure to send home the information that we shared that evening.

Thank you so much for sharing your children with us here at BCD. If you ever have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.

All the Best,

Katharine and Kay
Enjoy the slide show below!

By BCD Blog|2016-10-25T15:02:10-04:00September 15th, 2016|

Simple Music Practice Tips from Mr. Martin!

Music is a rewarding and lifelong journey that can begin at any time and place. Oftentimes the joys of music-making can be lost (for some!) by the dread of regular practicing.

I know our returning musicians are probably thinking about their private lessons for the year and (potentially) cramming in some last hours of practice time before Wednesday, September 14!

Please see below for a few simple practice tips for aspiring musicians of any age:

Drink water and take care of bodily health. It’s good to stay active, but also make sure you feel relaxed and centered before beginning practice time. This is important to make sure no injuries occur, as well as to ensure a productive session!
Warm up before practicing scales or repertoire. This could mean playing/singing long tones, taking deep breaths, or another warm-up technique given by your private instructor.
Slow down! It is common for musicians to practice tricky sections of music at an inappropriately fast tempo. When learning or practicing a new/challenging section, make sure to take the tempo down to a crawl. Then work your way up to the faster tempo.
Quality over Quantity. There are a lot of varying opinions about practice time. For an adult, 1 hour of great practicing is worth 4 hours of mindless practicing. Or for a younger student, 15-30 minutes of daily practicing could do the trick. If you have more questions about developmental appropriateness and practice time, feel free to reach out.
Be mindful of repetition. From an outside perspective, great practicing probably sounds like lots of repetition of various musical snippets of a piece. What the musician’s brain does, however, is practice getting one thing right (i.e. hand position or a tricky accidental note) and building on another element, in order to bring the piece closer to concert-ready.
JOY. What a great privilege and opportunity to have the chance to play beautiful music! Even when playing a scale, we can bring expression and joy to that by thinking about how much we love what we do.
Take time off. One mantra could be: Practice 6 days straight, and then give yourself a break on 1. Private instructors can give more specific advice on how to best take breaks and avoid burnout.

Thanks for reading, and happy practicing to our BCD performers!

Musically Yours,

Mr. Martin

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Here’s a fun photo of me in soundcheck, preparing for a 2014 performance in Beijing, China.

(Feel free to reach out to cmartin@berkshirecountryday.org with any questions.)

By BCD Blog|2017-08-11T11:06:28-04:00August 31st, 2016|

When to start private music lessons?

This is a question asked frequently here at BCD and in my private studio. There is no “magic age” to start and no one correct answer to this question. Generally, brass and woodwind lessons are given to students around 4th grade. Guitar is most often taught starting in 3rd grade. Piano, violin, viola and cello are great choices for our students to begin as early as 3 years old.

I had the opportunity to begin with piano lessons at 4 years old, and that’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. Having said that, there’s a dialogue between teacher, student, and parent that informs these choices. My mom says I made it abundantly clear piano was an early passion!

Begin lessons when your child is ready to take direction from an adult, take responsibility for practicing and when the family is ready to devote time, money and energy into this wonderful new adventure.

Feel free to reach out to me at cmartin@berkshirecountryday.org with any additional questions. Happy Summer 2016!

By BCD Blog|2017-08-11T11:08:05-04:00July 8th, 2016|