More than Just Music Appreciation!

{Thank you to Zeezok Publishing LLC for providing the Music Appreciation: Book 1 for the Elementary Grades for this review}

Music has always been an important part of my life and I wanted to share my love of music with my daughters.  We focused more on being exposed to different music types and just appreciating the variety of styles of music.  I never used a formal curriculum.  That is, I didn't until now.  Thanks to Zeezok Publishing LLC I have found the most amazing homeschool music curriculum!

With Music Appreciation: Book 1 for the Elementary Grades you get far more than just a music education.  As you study each composer you also study geography, culture, language arts, history, and more! Each composer has his own 4 week unit.  You do not even have to start at the beginning of the book.  I let Supergirl choose which composer we should start with.  She choose George Frederick Handel. When we finished Handel she insisted we start Beethoven.

The Program Overall:

 

I want to give an overview of the program as a whole, describing each of the required components before I talk about how much fun we had studying Handel.

* Music Appreciation Student Activity Book

This ginormous consumable book is three hole punched with perforated pages so you can easily tear the pages out of the book and put completed pages into a notebook.  I only tore out pages that we needed for cutting and pasting and left the book intact.  In the front section you will find a table of contents, an introduction, a scope and sequence, and a very helpful music disk track list.  At the back of the activity book you will find the endnotes for all seven composers. Each of the seven composers has a self-contained section divided into 4 weeks of study.  The answers for each of the activities are included at the end of each unit.

* Music Appreciation Music CDs

These 5 CDs include all the music for the program. For Handel we were able to listen to "The Harmonious Blacksmith" and the "Hallelujah Chorus." In addition to select musical pieces discussed in each biography book, there are specific listening activities.  For example with Handel we learned about the Oboe.  After reading about the Oboe, we listened to Track 8 on Disc 3 "Oboe" so that we could hear the instrument.  Another music listening activity in the Handel unit had us listening to "Identify Contrasting Music Styles" and we listened to specific tracks and then answered the questions in the activity book.  Both the activity book and the biography book list when to listen and which track to listen to.  I appreciate having that all laid out for me!

* Music Appreciation Lapbook CD 

This CD contains all the booklets and folds to create a lapbook for each composer!  One thing that I appreciated about the lapbook was that there was no writing involved!  This makes it perfect for younger students.  This lapbook is different from lapbooks that we have done for other subjects. With the Music Appreciation Lapbook you are creating mini-books with additional information not found in the The Great Musician Series biography books. For example one of the mini-books we created included information on the city of Venice.  We assembled it together.  Supergirl has really improved in her cutting skills! Then, I read it out loud. Finally, Supergirl glued it onto the file folder. This activity extends the learning by giving us more information about Venice, a city that Handel visited.

I did not like that we had so much extra unused spaced. I loved that the disc included instructions for assembling the file folders and that it told me exactly where to place each piece but after completing Handel, I've decided that with Beethoven we will create all the mini-books and then I'll decide what type of file folder assemble I want to use.  I don't think I will use two file folders like we did with Handel.

* The Great Musician Series

These seven biographies written by Opal Wheeler and Sybil Deucher are the heart or core of the program.  Titles include:

• Mozart The Wonder Boy
• Franz Schubert and His Merry Friends
• Sebastian Bach the Boy from Thuringia
• Paganini Master of Strings
• Ludwig Beethoven and the Chiming Tower Bells
• Handel at the Court of Kings 

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Handel and Beethoven each have 4 chapters.  In both of those books there are pages of sheet music sprinkled thoughout each chapter. In Handel we read the story behind "The Harmonious Blacksmith" and after the story there is the sheet music. I can't play the sheet music but that's ok because we just listened to the track on the CD.  Handel at the Court of Kings begins when George Frederick Handel was very young. Chapter one begins with the town crier shouting about a missing boy.  The missing boy?  None other than little George.  He had heard music and ran off with the band. We've only just begin Beethoven but Supergirl was delighted that it begins at the beginning with the birth of Ludwig.

Having Fun with Handel

When we started the program, I had it in my head that we had to read the whole chapter, which was very long, and then we could start the activities.  We took several days to read chapter one and then we began to work through the activities. When we finished week 1, I decided to change things up and we would overlap reading the book with working through the Student Activity Book. The suggested pace is four weeks per composer but we ended up taking about 1 1/2 weeks to complete 1 week.  This slower pace works better for Supergirl.

Supergirl had this to say about learning about Handel:  "I like how we read about how Handel was a little kid and how he went outside to listen to the music and his family tried to find him.  I like how we read it together. I love the lapbook! I liked talking about the questions. I liked finding the places on the map where Handel went. I liked eating foods that Handel might have eaten. It was fun."

I think she just really likes the food related activities included for each composer!  We started Beethoven and she insisted on having oatmeal for breakfast because "Beethoven ate porridge and oatmeal is like porridge"  She also urgently called me to "come here!" She was sitting at the table flipping through the activity book and found Hayden.  She spotted ice cream.  "Look, Mama!  I can eat ice cream!"   I think we'll be moving on to Hayden when we finish Beethoven.

This is a wonderful curriculum that can be used for children from elementary through 6th grade.  I think 7th and 8th graders would be able to use it as well.  Want to know more?  Click on the banner below to read more crew member reviews of this program.