<p>Can a third grader do NYSSMA?</p>
<p>Yes, last year our school hosted NYSSMA and we had a first grader participate. Your school needs to participate and you’ll need to coordinate it with your public school teacher. So contact the music teacher(s) for your school or the music administrator for your district and find out what the procedure is to enroll your child. They have different levels and you could have your child just do a festival level where the adjudicator will just list comments without an official score or you can do an official one if your child needs a score to participate in some camp/or honors program.</p>
<p>I assume you mean the Solo Festivals held at various schools? The youngest I’ve seen was 4th grade, but the catch is that the youngster must participate in the proper ensemble (band, chorus, orchestra) in their school and said school must have paid the fee to take part. Perhaps, if a 3rd grader IS a member of his/her school’s band, etc, and the school is taking part, then the child should be eligible to participate.
There is a “for students” section on the NYSSMA website which gives information, but you also need to check with the school’s music director.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, 2 of my 3 kids did NYSSMA piano solos as 3rd graders (both started lessons in 2nd grade, the older one not until a couple years later). The “rules” for instrumentalists are probably different, as most schools don’t start band until later. The teacher we used has had MANY very young kids participate.</p>
<p>Last year, the first grader was a violinist from a different school district. The youngster in question was definitely an oddity since most of the local districts start chorus at 3rd grade, orchestra at 4th and band at 5th.</p>
<p>Did not think of this in my previous post, but in our town there is a thriving private strings “academy”- for kids of all ages, probably because not many of the school districts around here have orchestra programs. They teach Suzuki and have many pre-schoolers and early elementary students- so maybe that 1st grade violinist took lessons at a similar place.</p>
<p>Momofbassist-</p>
<p>A lot of violin students start the instrument long before they get to school. Most school programs I have seen start instrumental music in the 4th grade or so, if they have it, and strings are a lot rarer in districts that have instrumental music then all wind based (my own school system growing up was wind/band, no strings). Many violin students start when they are 4 or 5 in Suzuki programs, and with some kids they start even younger and the parents will push them so by the time they are in third grade they are advanced, same thing with piano.</p>
<p>Yes, I did know that they start early. Older son started piano at 4… Won’t touch it now.
And one of the violin teachers at son’s chool did start her daughter on violin at age 2. I was commenting the early age for NYSSMA since you usually have to be in a school sponsored performing group to participate.</p>
<p>My own daughter did NYSSMA in 3rd grade (violin) - she had started in 1st grade privately, and her teacher suggested we ask the 4th/5th grade orchestra teacher to listen to her and ask whether she could participate. He said yes, and the school permitted it.</p>