Kindergarten Archives - Page 8 of 46 - 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|

Wonderful first week in Kindergarten!

What a great – and busy – first week we’ve had together. The children were friendly, happy, engaged, and excited to be in school! In four days, we’ve started to “gel” as a class by talking together about the kind of year we want to have together and the way we should treat each other to get there. At the end of the week each child told me their school “hopes and dreams”. Next they’ll draw a picture of them and share them with one another. From that, we’ll begin to develop our classroom rules.

When our monarch eggs arrived, they were no bigger than a pinprick, but, literally, overnight most of them hatched! These baby caterpillars were 1/32″ long – almost impossible to see. But we know they’re eating because we can see the holes in the milkweed leaves. Who knows how big they’ll be in another day or two!

In math, the children have had lots of fun creating with pattern blocks. While the first day’s designs were all flat, further experimentation included pieces standing on end or tall stacks carefully built. Below are some of their spontaneous comments:

“Nothing is easy. You just have to build what’s in your mind.”

“I’m building a rocket, a very big rocket.”

“I’m not saying what I’m building, I’m just building.”

“I need some green.” “Here.” “Thank you!”

“Whoa, that’s cool! Neha, that’s one beautiful thing!”

“I made butterflies hanging from a tree branch.” (Vivienne)

“This is the empire’s death star.” (Rhys)

“My flower took hard work.” (Neha)

“This is like the whole playground and see that? It’s pointing to the junk yard.” (Magnus)

“I don’t even know. I was just making a design.” (Lily)

“This is a snowman and this is an abstract and this is a rocket ship and this was an alien ship.” (Nicolette)

“This is a rocket ship and that’s Han Solo’s ship that has the big hole and the big monster and their ship fell in by accident. And then Darth Vadar came.” (Chase)

Creative minds…

Hard at work!

We’ve enjoyed seeing everyone’s family photographs, and had fun listening to everyone’s books from home. In addition, we’ve had Music with Mr. Martin, Spanish with Sr. Silva, Art with Ms. Sicurella, Library with Ms. Tone, and PE with Mr. Storti ( (I told you it was a busy week!) And on Friday, we had a fun picnic lunch and hike on Mike’s Trail with our friends in PreK and grades 1, 2, and 3.

We’re off to a great start!

Andrea

By BCD Blog|2016-10-25T15:02:10-04:00September 12th, 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|