Fitting Music in to Homeschooling
As a parent who home-schools you want to do everything in your power to educate your children. Am I right? You can quickly get overwhelmed at the possibilities, especially this time of year when everyone is posting their fantabulous plans for the new homeschool year. I learned quickly that I can’t teach my children everything all the time. I want to give them a well-rounded education. But there are some things I learn right alongside them.
Music appreciation is one of those things. I don’t know how to read or play any musical instrument although I did play clarinet in elementary school. Let’s just say that I wasn’t the star player and leave it at that. That’s where Harmony Art Mom saves me every time. She has the plans all written out for you. You just find the composer. I look on Youtube first to find several pieces. She even gives you the notebook page to go along with it if you desire. We are currently using her FREE plans for composers and artists in the 1800s since that corresponds with our time period in history.
Now that you know where I get the plans from let me tell you what we do. We start our notebook page together while we listen to several pieces from the composer. Each child picks his or her focal piece. This term both children picked Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Johannes Brahms. This piece will go on their iPods for them to listen to at least 10 times over the next 6 weeks. I will play several pieces sometime during the week as background music. This is usually in the evening when we are doing chores. I also look at the library for some books on the composer and leave those out for free reading time. At the end of the 6 weeks then each child gives a narration of their piece. This could be a song, a picture, a skit, whatever. We finish up our notebook page then we move on to the next composer.
See, easy peasy. The children get to hear quality music and learn to appreciate it. I get to feel better that I am indeed giving them as much of an education as I can with minimal stress. That my friends are how we fit music into our homeschool. I guess I need to do the disclaimer that our church has a phenomenal kids music program that runs during the year that also covers basic music theory.
Do you include music in your home-school lessons?
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This sounds great! I work at a local music store, and last year a home school mother came in to our store with an idea for home school band. This year, we have more members than we could have imagined, it’s such a success and the kids love it! They even got a local Lutheran school music teacher to direct it, and we are looking at starting a choir also.
I definitely like the idea of teaching children music appreciation. I think I’d probably incorporate music and art in with social studies and political science lessons, especially when my son is older. I don’t think I will be homeschooling my son, but I also don’t intend for him to only receive formal education at school. I will definitely continue teaching my son things at home.
I love this! Sounds like you’re doing wonderfully. I’m a bit behind on gathering resources for my son’s kindergarten year (he’s my oldest) so this will be our first official year of homeschooling. Thank you for sharing this as well as your link.