March Music Thread

[Wafflenose]

Here you are - a new thread for March! I can't believe we are now up to 700+ posts each month. Thank you all.

I am Waffle, Mum to two girls. I have Goo (11), short for Kajagoogoo, which is 'short' for Kaj, which means... well, that would be telling! Her younger sister is Rara (8) - Rara is what she used to call herself when she was learning to speak. Goo plays the flute, recorder and piano. Rara plays the cello, recorder and clarinet. We have Grade 7 Flute and Grade 1 Clarinet booked for the end of this month. I think we might have Grade 3 Cello and Grade 4 Piano coming up next term. Goo is off to secondary in a few months, and I really don't know if she will ever manage to fit in her last couple of recorder exams. I'm all for saving money though.

I will try my best to read everything and follow this month. Last month's thread moved so fast!!

If a primary school knows what it's doing then 30 minutes is enough!
My experience of comprehensive school homework is feast and famine - either a lot or bizarrely little! The latter is great for dcs doing music as they have more time for it and I don't think the overall amount is a problem for GCSEs. My one worry is that A levels will come as an almighty shock for DS1! He will be fine but he will have a shock!

Yes bedtime is the key probably. DS is in bed between 8-9pm. The light off is 9pm so the earlier he gets in bed, the longer he can read books. Once he starts going to bed later, then he will have more time (I hope). But I think his bedtime is pretty late already... What time Y7 up goes to bed??

Green, I am not a big fan of homework, so less is better for us...

LIZS - snap! Sounds like you are describing DD1!

We've always had 40mins homework per night plus 20mins reading. We do try and double up, so car journey home = reading etc. It is do-able but 11+ year does require sacrifices in something. We didn't do a JD audition for that reason. Maybe we'll try year8 or something.

LIZS is your dd doing the exam this session? What pieces is she doing?

Found first term at secondary school tricky. Lots of things to get used to. Agree about getting up to date with everything by the end of the weekend. Then weekdays prioritise, only do what needs doing before the next weekend. Some things can be done in the car. If 10 min time left before going to school, that's 10 min for scales, or 10 min for the "Bond's10 min test books" etc

Wow! Some excellent exam results.. well done!
Dd is lucky in that she's naturally quite good at organising ..so prioritises and completes homework according to her own system. I am not really involved beyond knowing what she has.
Lol- Ds was a completely different story !
Practice wise Dd does quite a lot I think. About an hour and a half on school days and about 3-4 hours at weekends. She also stays for music for an hour after school twice a week. I rarely hear a whole piece on any instrument .. it's usually the same tricky part over and over.
For this reason, I am sometimes quite glad of 7pm when I can tell her (for the sake of our neighbour's sanity) to move onto the digi piano with headphones.

11+ year does require sacrifices in something
I should pay attention to your words as your DD was so successful with 11+... But how much sacrifice should be made...? I wrote about a lady who made her DS study an hour everyday which increased to 2 hours from Y5. I thought..., if that's a norm for 11+ preparation we would have no chance....

JD auditions are usually in Spring. For example, all the auditions for DS is happening in March/April. So it won't interfere 11+ season (provided most of 11+ exams end by Jan).

No 11+ here .. Dd goes to local state comp.
Homework at secondary seemed a shock for her at first but there is a timetable to it so she knew what was coming and it slowly grows in amount ( yr 9 now) so they adjust

Kutik, are you in year 5 now? And you do 20mins a day for 11+ and home work? Are you aiming for grammar or private? We plan(need) to do more.
I used to do longer hours than now when my daughter was little(something like never got home before 7.30pm and could see her for 30mins max). The only "good" thing about it is I never was able to arrange for any activity during the week which needs travelling to a place like dance, ballet. Since last year our weekend was only catching up with our (much needed) sleep, recovering for the week, going out door a little and usual household chore. We failed to pass the last stage of swimming so we are not qualified for squad yet. We'd like to do a (little/no) competitive one.

Piano playing: last night I saw her practising playing crossing hands and loads of pedalling(the chair still squeaks), I didnt know crossing hands is a technique, I thought it was a show off when I see people do it.

Yes doubleup she took it last week. I don't really know what pieces except one was Bach and another Carnival Time. She's 15 now (sadly no prodigy) so I just let her get on with it and "encourage" her from time to time. She has a concert next week with a medley of WestSide Story music so focus is now on that.

To those with primary age children practice time diminishes with increased homework and extra curricular activities at secondary. They also don't want to get up so early!

Tbh DS - musician - has less trouble fitting in homework than DD - dancer...possibly because individual music practice can be fitted in quite flexibly, whereas if you have 3 hours of dance between 6 and 9 on a Wednesday night, there is no way it can be moved.

Luckily, their school has a tightly adhered to homework timetable, so all homework is expected and can be planned for.

(Waiting for Trinity Grade 6 jazz Sax result here .. getting DS to the exam turned out to be the tricky bit and involved hastily arranged lifts and complex bus schedules)

Green, yes DS is Year 5, and no he doesn't do 20 mins a day for 11+ and homework. He doesn't get much homework from school. For instance, all he had to do this week was 2 pages of maths which didn't take DS no more than 10 mins. He gets loads homework from his Saturday school which we have 'let's use any gap we find and just finish off' attitude. They are all in my language so nothing to do with National Curriculum. We haven't done anything for 11+ nor any extra work at home. He was always doing fine in the class so our focus was his extra-curricular than academia. But I know it's not good enough for 11+. Just wondering how much we are expected to prepare. DS is very keen (but he is keen on everything anyway), but I'm not sure if it's realistic for us to aim. Your DD is still Y4, so she has plenty time to prepare.

The tennis and swim squad I mentioned are both school squad so you don't need to be super brilliant to get in.

LIZS we still have a few days of pain here before exam next week. I'll be glad not to have to remind her to practice for a while. She's doing some lovely pieces; Haydn Andante, Telemann Fantasia No. 2 and Gabriel's oboe (which she played at her grandfather's funeral last month). Pieces sound great - shame about the scales/aural...

It's 3 days until Rara's exam, and 5 until Goo's. Unfortunately, they were wrestling on the sofa the other day, and Goo's fingers got bent back and injured - again!! Her practice has been dodgy ever since, but I've made her do some anyway, for general stamina. She's off games and sports clubs this week, in an effort to preserve her for Wednesday, and also an area final in Netball on Tuesday. I'm probably going to let her play in the match, but am hoping against hope that she doesn't hurt anything else!

My little one does about 15-18 hours a week between 2 bands, school orchestra, singing, 2 lessons and home practise, between both instruments

DS audition tomorrow and he cut himself in the finger yesterday which makes holding the mallets painful. He'll have to try with a plaster Waffle it's the law!

Drummersmum - its not in their main list of bursaries, but last year they started offering 8 bursaries to "promising younger musicians earlier in their musical journey" is how they described it to me in the email. On their website, the only bit I saw about it is in the "meet our musicians" where there's a section about them.

I was very pleased DS2 had a student council meeting instead of PE the day before the Festival started. At the end of the first day though, he exhibited a sore finger with a splinter from woodwork at school. You can't escape anywhere!

Thank you to all for their congratulations to DS2.

Well done to all those with successful results so far

Thanks moo

Well done for the great results with exams all! Waffle and everybody else still having exams coming up good luck!

Dd does on average 10 hours of music a week, sometimes more depending on how motivated she is or if there is an exam coming up, very rarely less. It isn't enough at this point I think she should do an hour solid on piano and 30 min solid on clarinet which would mean 13 hours of music but as she's now concentrating on only 3 pieces on piano she doesn't have the right level of concentration to dedicate more than a quick practice each and moving on to the next task. Which means she is only doing about 45 min on piano and 15 on clarinet.

This will obviously change as we are approaching the exams as she'll suddenly realise more needs to be done and we had practice sessions of over an hour on piano only in the festival run up.

But that is how she's functioning so I can't complain.

Great news anyway kutik and it's worth looking at the music and dance scheme funding as you can get reduced fees ( I think the jd would be able to point you in the right direction) hope all the injuries recover ( and that goo doesn't get anymore waffle!!)