Our family utilizes many Charlotte Mason principals and methods in our homeschool - one of which is composer and music study. I have struggled in this area of enrichment study because I don't know much about music or composers {as sad as that is to admit}. When we were given the opportunity to review Music Appreciation Book One for the Elementary Grades by Zeezok Publishing LLC, I was over the moon ecstatic!
WHAT WE WERE SENT:
HOW WE USED IT:
We started this program by studying George Frederic Handel. We read his biography, "Handel at the Court of Kings". The biographies are the heart of this curriculum, and I am very impressed with how well-done they are! They are true, living books with black and white illustrations and music written by the composer throughout. I read the biography aloud to all of my children as part of our Morning Time. This book had 4 chapters, and we read one chapter a week. The chapters are rather long, so we took 2-4 days to complete each chapter. Even though they were long, they were very interesting and told in a very story-like narrative with humor and historical facts scattered throughout the book. My children enjoyed listening to it very much!
The Student Activity Book is a wonderful resource! This includes many hands-on activities for each composer - geography, history, recipes, instrument study, vocabulary, musical facts, timelines, character trait study, and more! This Student Book is aimed toward every kind of learner - visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and active learners. There is a Weekly Lesson Outline for each composer, and each composer study is to last 4 weeks. This Outline is very flexible, and just lists the chapter{s} to read, activities to complete in the student activity book, music to listen to {with disc and track numbers}, and when to complete the lapbook. I liked this outline, because I could glance at what we needed to do each week and fit it in to whatever days were available for us. Since I had five children using this program, and one student activity book, we completed many of the activities orally. It worked just fine this way!
There is also a Lapbook CD providing lapbook templates for each of the seven composers. I had a very difficult time printing the lapbook templates for Handel, but I was very pleased when I finally got it to print! The lapbook is full-color with templates covering the composer, geography, character, and musical concepts. I decided against each of my children making their own lapbook, so my oldest daughter and I put this one together ourselves. We then showed it to the other kids and let them look at all of the components and read the information. It was much easier this way!
The Music Appreciation CDs provide all of the supplemental music that correspond with the weekly lessons on the composer. These CDs contain the music listed in the biographies, plus an additional 35 professionally recorded pieces. My children really enjoyed listening to this beautiful music, and so did I!
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
I really love this program! It is very Charlotte Mason friendly, in my opinion. The biographies are beautiful, living books. The music CD is an excellent resource to have and listen to. The lapbook was fun for my daughter and I to put together. The Student Activity book is a beautiful, colorful book with real pictures and is full of information and facts! We learned so much from this Music Appreciation for the Elementary Grades! It doesn't take long each day to use this program - I would say 20-30 minutes. We will be continuing this curriculum for our school year next year. My son wants to study Mozart next!
This entire collection is $169.99, which is a great price considering everything you are receiving. If you are looking to add composer study to your homeschool day, check out Zeezok Publishing LLC's Music Appreciation Book 1: For The Elementary Grades!
I love that this includes music CD's. No more searching to find music to listen to when learning about composers!
ReplyDeleteI like how you were able to use this with your whole gang. I am considering it for mine ages 8, 11 and 13 this coming fall.
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