His Treasure Seekers

Last month we started becoming familiar with the music of French composer Claude Debussy.  There weren’t a lot of extras to go along with our study, but that didn’t lessen our enjoyment.  I’m realizing that one composer a month is rather a quick pace, for I’m finding myself surprised when we come to the end of a month and move on.  This first year I’m really only trying to introduce the whole idea of composer study, so I think we’ll keep with my original plan.  However, next year will be Ian’s official “Kindergarten” year, and I think then we’ll slow down a little and just do one composer per term, probably sticking with the suggested schedule from Ambleside Online.  (Actually, I included their composers for this year in our own schedule because I knew we wouldn’t be doing a full study and I wanted to hit all the major composers this year as an introduction.)

Here’s what we listened to in our month with Debussy:

• “Voyage to the Moon” (based on “Claire de Lune”) from Beethoven’s Wig: Sing-Along Piano Classics
• Classics for Kids episodes on Debussy
• Prelude to an Afternoon With a Fawn, La Mer and Nocturnes from CDs we found at the library
• “Nuit d’Etoiles” and “La Belle aus Bois Dormant” recordings from my senior vocal recital in college
• My First Classical Music Book section on Debussy (book with CD)
• “Arabesque No.1” from The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine (book with CD)

Adding “composer study” to our school subjects was really a no pressure way to expand our learning simply by being intentional.  I enjoy listening to classical music, and it’s so easy to help my children become familiar with great composers just by choosing a composer for the month and listening to his music at least once a week.  I tell them the composer’s name, and then we listen to the music and occasionally talk about what it sounds like.  If that’s all we do, great.  However, for some of the uber-famous composers, there are lots of other great ways to help all of us learn more about the composers’ lives and music, so I like to take advantage of those as well.

Last month we studied one of the “giants” of classical music: Ludwig van Beethoven, and there were a LOT of resources available.  Here’s a list of some of the things we enjoyed as we learned about this incredible artist.

Audio Resources

• Beethoven Lives Upstairs from Classical Kids (also the book and DVD)
• Classics for Kids episodes on Beethoven
• Beethoven for Children CD
• My First Classical Music Book section on Beethoven

The boys got a kick out of several pieces from the Beethoven’s Wig series, where silly lyrics are put to the tune of famous classical pieces. (There’s also a book that goes along with the title song, but we didn’t manage to get our hands on it.) All the albums are available on Amazon either on CD or for download.  Each album also contains the original song without words, so I recommend buying the whole album rather than individual songs, though I’ve also included links for each one.  There are pieces by many different composers, but these are the songs by Beethoven the we listened to:

• “Beethoven’s Wig” (5th Symphony) from the first album, Beethoven’s Wig (this song is available as a free download on the Beethoven’s Wig website)
• “Just for Elise” (Fur Elise) also on the first album, Beethoven’s Wig
• “Minuet for My Pet” (Minuet in G) from Beethoven’s Wig: Sing-Along Piano Classics
• “Beep Beep Beep” (Moonlight Sonata) from Beethoven’s Wig 4: Dance Along Symphonies

Video Resources

• Beethoven Lives Upstairs DVD (also available for purchase from Amazon Instant Video)
• Pastoral Symphony (6th) from Fantasia (I don’t recommend this one if your family is extremely sensitive to nudity.  I don’t have a problem with it since it is animated and not graphic.  My kids didn’t even notice.)

Little Einsteins episodes that have music by Beethoven (always a favorite in our house):

• “Brand New Outfit” and “The Missing Invitation” both feature “Ode to Joy” from the 9th Symphony
• “Brothers and Sisters to the Rescue” and “Annie and the Beanstalk” both feature the theme from the 5th Symphony.  (Every time Elijah hears the opening of the 5th Symphony he shouts, “That’s the Forte Giant!”)
• There are also 2 other episodes “The Christmas Wish” and “A Galactic Goodnight” (both feature “Fur Elise”) that we didn’t have on our DVR so we haven’t gotten to watch them yet.

Books and Other Reading

• We read the page on Beethoven in My First Classical Music Book, a wonderful introduction to music, composers, and instruments.
• Beethoven Lives Upstairs book
• Beethoven for Kids: His Life and Music with 21 Activities by Helen Bauer.  The cover says it’s for ages 9 and up, and I would agree.  A few of the activities could be done with younger kids, but they’d get a lot more out of them later on.  However, I was so drawn into the biography I read the whole thing in one morning.
• When my kids are older, I plan to read Beethoven: The Story of a Little Boys Who Was Forced to Practice by Thomas Tapper, which is in the public domain and can therefore be downloaded for free for Kindle or other ebook readers.
• There’s also a Starfall page on Beethoven

And for grown-ups:

Homeschooling is not just for the kids.  I try to did a little deeper and learn new things myself about the subjects we’re studying.  So I started practicing a piano Sonata I’d never learned before.  I may not do this for every composer (even the ones that wrote piano music), but after learning so much about Beethoven over the course of the month, it made the piece feel very personal.

I also enjoyed watching a couple videos about Beethoven online:

• Keeping Score: Beethoven’s Eroica on PBS
• In Search of Beethoven  (on both Netflix and free streaming for Amazon Prime members)

As always, if you have any suggestions of other resources, please comment!  I love collecting ideas!

In July we made our first venture into the world of classical composers.  My kids are no strangers to classical music, but it was first time we’ve discussed the person who wrote what we were listening to.  This first unit was much simpler than what I plan to do through the next school year, mostly because I wasn’t planning to do a true composer study.  We only did it because Grandma had just come from Russia and Stravinsky fit into the conversation, though he wouldn’t normally be one of my first choices for composers.

We started off by reading through the first section of My First Classical Music Book, which is about “When and Where” we hear classical music (in movies, at weddings, for dancing, etc.).  It’s a great introduction, and it comes with a CD that has clips to listen to for each page.  Then we turned to the second section of the book, which discusses a number of composers.  We read the page on Stravinsky as we played the “Russian Dance” from Petrushka on the CD.

Mostly we just listened to The Firebird, music the boys are already familiar with (thanks to Little Einsteins: Rocket’s Firebird Rescue) and talked about the fact that Stravinsky wrote it.  We also found some interesting information on the Classics for Kids website.  I love their podcasts because they’re really short (about 6 minutes) but have good information specifically presented to children.  There were four episodes specifically about Stravinsky and the Firebird.  Every time the boys heard the music they’d start talking about the characters from the story on Little Einsteins.  I’m glad the music has stuck in their heads!

The only other piece of music we spent any significant amount of with was The Soldier’s Tale from Maestro Classics.  I love the biographical information on these CDs.  The story was a little mature for my boys, so it wasn’t their favorite thing we’ve listened to, but after I had played it a few times Ian started requesting it.  My main goal in listening to this CD was to provide some exposure to the main piece and to hear the information about Stravinsky’s life, so I’d say it was a success.  We’ll come back to Stravinsky in a few years and then I think they’ll get even more out of it.

Although I have some background in classical music, Stravinsky was not terribly familiar to me.  I really enjoyed finding out more about his life and listening to his music more purposefully throughout the month.  Someday we’ll dig a little deeper into our composers, but for now a gentle introduction is just right for both the kids and myself.