Performing Arts

Our students feel like stars because they have a chance to shine!

Whether it’s performing on stage for one of our theater productions or singing full force to the entire school, our students have multiple opportunities to act, sing, dance and play instruments from the earliest grades.

The performing arts experience at ACDS establishes a comfort with public performance that is later reinforced and refined when our students deliver oral presentations in classes, and in Middle School when they take elective courses to satisfy our speech and debate graduation requirement. Our performing arts program develops proficiency and confidence in public speaking, which we believe is a critical skill set for ACDS students to obtain.

Theater Arts

There is an excitement, energy and passion that swirls around the ACDS auditorium every time a grade performs a play. Whether it’s the veteran fifth grade students confidently striding across the stage or the sweetest first grade children staring into the crowd, the transformation that takes place in our students is palpable.

The theater arts program has been an ACDS showcase since the school’s founding in 1982. Every elementary student participates in a musical theater performance in front of a live audience each year. With daytime and evening shows, that’s 20 performances on our stage annually, not counting productions by our middle school theater arts electives.

And what’s more, our shows are fantastic! Parent volunteers provide costumes and our middle school students assist with set design, lighting and sound.

Considering the age of the performers, ACDS plays are remarkably advanced. But our theater arts faculty — consisting of two teachers — is committed to the principle that no performance is more important than a child. The teachers put the children first, making them believers in themselves through the confidence-building and joy that are the most important outcomes of our performing arts program.

From a neurodevelopmental standpoint, active participation in theater arts stimulates multiple dimensions of the growing brain: memory, as a child learns a part; language, exercised through reading and expressing; spatial and gross motor skills as children learn how to move about the stage and are introduced to dance choreography; and of course, creativity, activated when children take someone else’s words and movements, and add their own flare, sharing and shaping their own unique creative self.

Every ACDS elementary student has a role in the class play; we have no auditions and no cuts. The directors often create lines or additional scenes to make sure all the characters have a presence on the stage during the show. The theater arts faculty’s aim is that during a child’s time onstage at ACDS over the years, every student will have a chance to be a star. Indeed, our alumni tell us that the opportunity to perform in a full–length annual musical show is a life-shaping experience that they treasure among their school memories.

In our experience, no matter what the initial level of confidence a child brings to the stage, after performing in ACDS plays, students feel empowered to do anything.

Contact ACDS for this year’s performance schedule, and we’ll see you at the show!

Music

From Preschool through 8th grade, the ACDS Music program is designed to help children discover their gifts and experience the excitement of music composition, history, theory, and performance.

Music at Almaden Country Day School is fun, engaging, and magical.

Our littlest ones enjoy Musical Movement

In Musical Movement, Early Childhood Education specialists engage our youngest children with fun lessons incorporating rhythmic patterning and exercise to build coordination, muscle tone and motor skills.

Making music in Elementary School

In Elementary Music class, children learn and practice a range of vocal ensemble pieces, and have opportunities to share their soloist and instrumental talents on a weekly basis.

Lessons in music theory, history and performance are shaped with the goal of making music a joyful part of students’ lives. Children have daily opportunities to make music together, featuring methodology from the Orff music program that combines movement, instruments, theater arts, speech, and song.

Finding the beat in Middle School

Middle School students can take their musical talents to the next level through a variety of electives. In addition to the annual Middle School musical elective, other Middle School music options vary each year and have recently included So You Think You Can Sing, in which students worked on vocal technique and built their singing repertoire and Garage Band where students learned to play cover songs on various instruments. 

After School Music Clubs

ACDS offers after-school music activities, including the ACDS Cougar Chorus for students in grades 2-4. The Cougar Chorus provides several exciting performance opportunities, such as the Winter Performance, holiday caroling around the ACDS neighborhood, and participation in school assemblies.

For students in grades 5-8, the ACDS Cougar Choir offers even more opportunities to showcase their talents. In addition to on-campus performances like the Winter Concert, holiday caroling, the Spring Concert, Valentine's Day singing-grams, and assemblies, the Cougar Choir also performs at special off-campus events. These include appearances at local sports events, such as a San Jose Barracuda hockey game and a Santa Clara University basketball game, as well as a 30-minute stage performance at Disneyland.

Cougar Vanguard Percussion Ensemble

The Cougar Vanguard Percussion Ensemble (VPE) offers students in grades 4-8 the opportunity to develop their musical talents in a dynamic and collaborative setting. As part of the drumline, students will explore rhythmic concepts ranging from basic fundamentals to advanced drum cadences, while learning to read and write musical notation. Participants will have the chance to experiment with a variety of percussion instruments, including the field snare, trio drums, bass drum, cymbal array, xylophone, and marimba. No prior experience is required—just a passion for making music and an eagerness to create "sweet, sweet noise!"