Music Appreciation Curriculum a Homeschool Family can Appreciate!

Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum

One of the most intimidating aspects of homeschooling to me is the fact that I am the teacher of every subject. I remember going to music class with a special music teacher even in elementary school. And while I strongly believe in the value of music appreciation and education, it’s definitely not a personal strength. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit how little I know about classical music and composers.

So, while I am very comfortable putting our own studies together without a formal curriculum in most areas, I really didn’t even know where to start with music education.

Comprehensive Music Appreciation Curriculum

Zeezok Music Appreciation for the elementary grades is just what we needed! Because I really didn’t know where to start, it was very helpful for me to have everything planned out for me with this curriculum. This is an all-inclusive music appreciation program. They offer:

  • complete lesson plans (including everything that is needed to meet national music appreciation standards),
  • lots of great activities, ideas, recipes, games, and worksheets
  • Lapbook activities
  • age-appropriate biographies for each of seven different composers,
  • Music Discs with the pieces talked about in the books, as well as other great features.

Studying Composers: Bach

We have been studying Back over the last few weeks. In the student activity book, each composer is given a 4 week study with full lesson plans provided for you:

Music Appreciation Lesson Plans

If you love unit studies, this is the music curriculum for you! The lessons incorporate many other areas of study–recipes, science experiments, geography, historical figures, character qualities, etc. I loved the way the curriculum tied music education into other areas of everyday life.

My boys especially loved the oxidation experiment. They saw the snowflakes in the activity book and just had to put their pennies outside in the snow.

The questions in the activity book led us to think about the music and how it made us feel.

Funny story. We were listening to Bach on our cd, and talking about how it made us feel, and how some songs might make us feel relaxed, happy, sad, mad, etc. I asked my 4-year-old, how Bach’s minuet made him feel, giving him some reasonable options–does this song make you feel relaxed, happy, sad? His response– “It makes me feel old.”

This kid cracks me up. My boys also had fun dancing around the living room listening to Bach, and painting pictures about nature scenes the songs made them think of. Caeden initially thought of a river and a sky with clouds, but then he decided to add some people to his picture as well.

My boys come from a musical family. My father-in-law plays guitar and steel guitar, their uncle plays bass guitar, and my hubby plays drums. They, too, have always been interested in music, and were very excited to read about the little boy, Sebastian Bach, who came from a musical family and loved music from a young age. I really appreciated that the biographical book was written in a very child friendly way without sacrificing historical accuracy.

Again, this program is very thorough, and set up in a way that makes it easy to teach, even if you have no experience with music education. At the same time, my friend, who is a former elementary music teacher, looked over the program and loved it. So, this program is a great music appreciation curriculum regardless of your personal experience with the subject matter.

Purchase the Curriculum

If you’d like to purchase the curriculum, you can use the code ihomeschool to save 10%! You can also connect with Zeezok Publishing on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Youtube.

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