Music

One of the things that John and I envisioned when we first began our home learning adventure was sharing beautiful classical music as a family. On the "Why we Homeschool" list, it's a part of "We want to infuse the good, the true, and the beautiful into every aspect of our children's education."

Everyone in our family enjoys music. Over the years, we have been working our way through How to Introduce Your Child to Classical Music in 52 Easy Lessons. But with Tommy away and Joseph and Matthew as new listeners, we decided to begin again at the beginning of the book. And we have a good plan (we hope) for enjoying a lesson a week throughout the school year.

On Sunday at dinner, we will learn about and listen to a new piece of music. Then, each night at dinner during the week, we will listen to the same piece again so it becomes familiar. We are beginning with recognizing instrument sounds, and even Matthew could shout out, "Trumpets!" in the theme of The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by last Saturday. We are also using The Story of the Orchestra to look at pictures of the instruments and read more about each instrument family.

For Joseph and Matthew,the musical instruments puzzle is out on the shelf, and we always have our rhythm and wind instruments on the music shelves.

In the music book basket along with The Story of the Orchestra are Meet the Orchestra, Arturo's Baton, Music, Beethoven Lives Upstairs, and an old one from Jonella, Shining Brass: The Story of the Trumpet and Other Brass Instruments, by Daniel B. Tetzlaff. I am also thinking of adding new picture books to our collection for Joseph and Matthew. I have hesitated because we already have the music on CD, but I love the idea of musical picture books. One nice thing about books like that is that everyone will take a peek at them, even though I supposedly order them for the "little kids." So I'm considering.

This week, we are learning more about woodwinds and listening to Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev. Katie asked if she could add the composers to her timeline. Who am I to say no? So now, she has one entry in the 20th century along with her Ancient Romans. This is exactly the idea of the timeline, which I will post more about some other time.

Our study also prompted me to add another list over to the right. You can see what we're listening to each week as we work through our study under "In the CD Player."