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Announcements |
2020 RECITAL INFORMATION & PREPARATION
The spring recital is TBA. Please sign up for recital A or B at your keyboard class.
RECITAL A: 3:00 P.M Recital and reception.
RECITAL B: 4:15 P.M. Reception and Recital.
At each recital we will be starting with singing, dancing, and music games with the formal recital directly after. Please plan on arriving 15 minutes before your scheduled recital so your child can try the piano and become comfortable in the space. Siblings, family, and friends are very welcome to join us in celebrating your child’s musical accomplishments. Please bring a healthy appetizer to share and a canned good to donate to the local food pantry. Both recitals will participate in the reception that begins at 4:15 P.M.
As the Oak Park Arms often hosts recitals and other musical events as a service to the residents, plan on seeing and greeting these guest audience members in the ballroom for the recital. The Arms offers their space as a service to the community so there will be no recital fee for this event.
In preparation for the recital, please keep in mind the following: If your songs are memorized but were originally reading pieces please bring all your music so it will be available. Please remember to bring your music and handily mark the page if your child will be using the book. Please dress appropriately, no jeans, t-shirts, or gym shoes; this is both a performance and a celebration of your hard work. Again, please bring a snack or appetizer to share afterwards and plan on enjoying the fun!
PARTNERING WITH PARENTS TO NOURISH THE BODY, MIND AND HEART THROUGH MUSIC
12 reasons to continue growing with Musikgarten now that your child is in preschool.
- Musikgarten keeps children and their parents and caregivers connected throughout the music learning early years. In the Musikgarten setting, we understand how important it is to continue enriching and enlivening your bonds of affection, connection and playfulness. Families participate in a rich, developmentally appropriate, and colorful life of music making together. The music making weaves into the fabric of your lives in a way that nurtures family togetherness, musicality and creativity. Not just a rich repertoire of songs and singing games you know by heart, but poetry, folk stories, dances, nature exploration activities and more.
- Your child will be practicing key areas of development for this age. The important rhythmic and movement activities actually prepare the brain to learn, all while experiencing the joy of making music with friends.
- The musical activities your child enjoys also help to build impulse control, inner speech, self-soothing strategies, pre-reading skills, pre-writing skills, balance, and motor skills.
- We sing songs with opportunities for individual responses and a broader range for vocal development.
- We practice moving with more complexity.
- We continue to practice rhythm and steady beat.
- We tell stories with movement and music, inviting the children to bring them alive.
- We offer many different opportunities for children to verbalize their ideas and suggestions.
- We continue to practice patterns with accuracy, using tonal and rhythmic names that we later connect to notation. These patterns provide exercise for the brain and help develop memory.
- We emphasize making connections between symbols and sound first with graphic notation and then with note reading familiar patterns. Later, these are found in the notation of favorite songs.
- We develop ensembles, building skills on large motor instruments.
- Our curriculum is designed to create fully literate, creative & independent musicians. This is why we offer our sequential group classes for 3-9 year olds (Cycles of Seasons, Music Makers, and Keyboard). In our society learning language is a given and the process of acquiring it is second nature. Music can feel the same if it is introduced as a parallel process. Our sequential program was created by world-renowned musicians, music professors, child development specialists, and neuroscientists. It is uniquely designed to develop music literacy in children in a natural, joyful and enriching manner. Take a look below and see how learning your first language compares to learning the “language” of music. It doesn’t have to be the difficult and discouraging process that so many of us thought it was growing up!
Language Literacy VS.
A baby hears and Absorbs the sounds and rhythm of language. No language response. |
Music Literacy
A baby hears and absorbs the sounds and rhythm of music. Random response. |
| Begins to imitate sounds; No comprehension. |
Echoing patterns on a neutral syllable. |
| Associates an object or person with its label (spoken). Accumulates a bank of words with meaning. |
Echoing patterns using solfege or rhythm language. |
| Aurally recognizes a familiar word when spoken in a phrase or sentence. |
Aurally recognizes a familiar pattern within the context of a song or chant. |
| Accumulates a bank of “sight-words” – isolated, familiar words that the child recognizes in their written form. |
Seeing and identifying isolated, familiar patterns in notation. |
| Visually recognizes a familiar word when written in a phrase or sentence. |
Visually recognizes a familiar pattern within the context of a written song or chant. |
| Visually can decipher unfamiliar words by using what they’ve learned about familiar words. |
Can figure out unfamiliar patterns by making inferences from what they know about familiar patterns. |
| Composes with (writes) words, sensibly, in complete phrases or sentences. |
Can improvise or compose pieces by manipulating patterns in music. |
| Learns (and can explain) the rules of our written language: grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc. |
Explains and successfully applies the rules of music theory. |
One of the hallmarks of the Musikgarten program is that we are preparing children to be lifelong, joyful musicians. Our curriculum and teachers support music making that fosters a dynamic, playful and creative relationship to music making. As Ellen Johansen writes, “One of the strengths of our program is the underlying passion for music that is instilled in the children. This is the enduring motivation of children to spend the time to learn an instrument and to put in the hours to refine their technique and their musical ear.” Children, (and often the parents who partner with them on this journey,) learn to love to make music, not just to play the piano, and to simply follow the song sheet.
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As the Oak Park Arms often hosts recitals and other musical events as a service to the residents, plan on seeing and greeting these guest audience members in the ballroom for the recital. The Arms offers their space as a service to the community so there will be no recital fee for this event.
In preparation for the recital, please keep in mind the following: If your songs are memorized but were originally reading pieces please bring all your music so it will be available. Please remember to bring your music and handily mark the page if your child will be using the book. Please dress appropriately, no jeans, t-shirts, or gym shoes; this is both a performance and a celebration of your hard work. Again, please bring a snack or appetizer to share afterwards and plan on enjoying the fun!
What a joy to listen to the wonderful piano performances of the children. How happy it made us to celebrate your musical accomplishments. I smile to remember the children in their fancy attire, playing with gusto and confidence and skillfulness. The dances and ensemble performance were special delights. The parents, family members & teachers beamed with pleasure. We are truly blessed with the lovely talent and dedication of our wonderful keyboard teachers Maria Bolchert, Laura Moglia Kelley, and Beky Koontz. We are so thankful for your gifts of teaching.
Wonderful thanks to the Oak Park Arms and the gracious Desi Vasquez, social director at the Arms. We are tremendously grateful for their extra-ordinary support. “It is a wonderful world and it’s all at the Arms.”
If you have questions about the recital, please contact Beky at musikgartenoakpark@gmail.com.
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