Surprisingly joyful moment in the car listening to classical music?  Hearing the boys relate the piece to a part of a movie, cartoon, the composer, a previous lesson, a you tube video . .

This year, I’m hooking up with some online girlfriends to try to write a post each week about our Composer Studies. We’ll link up those posts for you to enjoy.  You may be an active participant – joining in on the Link-Up with your blog posts – or join us reading the ideas each week and see if we can help you to incorporate the studies into your home. Below I’d like to share some of the tools that we have used over the years –

Ambleside Online. We started out with Ambleside Online – Charlotte Mason – and followed their plan for a year when the boys were younger. How did Charlotte Mason teach Music?  From Ambleside Online – Music

– “That is the principle of attentiveness and good observation. The goal is not to have children who can give a lecture on music theory. It is to have children learn to enjoy classical music and tell one piece from another just as naturally as they learn the difference between, say, The Farmer in the Dell and When the Saints Go Marching In – because they are both familiar with and fond of what they are hearing.”

For a complete online Composer Study – visit Ambleside Online.  This online tool is how we started.

Notebooking Pages. Ambleside Online promotes the use of Notebooking – (Petra School does too) – and you can get an ebook of 286 notebooking pages which contains 10 notebooking layouts in primary and regular-lined formats for 28 famous composers. Type of images used varies. Notebook cover, listening guide pages, and continuation pages included.

More details can be found at NotebookingPages.com – here – Composer Notebook – and may be purchased for $5.95.

Timberdoodle/Bright Ideas Press. This year – we are going to be using The Young Scholars Guide to the Composers  – as a review for Timberdoodle. I’ve downloaded the study – printed the notebooking pages – might incorporate some notebooking pages from NotebookingPages.com as well – and through these Linky-Posts, I’ll share our journey this month and give a full review at the end of September.  So far – It’s pretty fair to say – I’m really excited about it.  This may be the easiest most complete package we’ve set out to use so far!  (Grades 3-8)

Harmony Fine Arts.  The past year or so – we have worked through a few of the Composer studies at Harmony Art Mom’s site – as they were attached to the Handbook of Nature Study e-book a couple of times as an option.  We REALLY enjoyed them, but didn’t have the drive or accountability to add them to our lessons weekly.  Barb has a free mini unit study on her Squidoo Page and inexpensive mini units for purchase as well. The two I looked at were $3.95 – and she has full year plans by grade as well.
From her site:

Harmony Fine Arts is the easy to use art and music appreciation plans for homeschooling families with children of all ages. I have started writing mini-units in the form of ebooks which cover one artist and one composer for a short period of time.
These units include resources, links, notebooking pages, art prints, and ideas for follow-up activities for you to use with your family.
The heart of the artist study is always viewing great artwork and the core of the music appreciation is listening to one composer for a period of time. These simple to use units require very little extra investment and in many cases you can find all your materials online and free.

Barb is going to be offering a Free Mini Unit Study to a reader of these Linky’s – look for it in the next couple of weeks! From her heart – “Anything that helps get families listening to classical music. 🙂 ”  Thanks Barb!

So – From the free – to packaged curriculum, to composer studies designed by moms who have actually used them with several children in a Charlotte Mason style – you can see that there are many choices. Don’t let the many choices stale mate you from picking a path to start.  For simple, inexpense, tried and true – I suggest a mini unit study from Barb.

I can’t wait to share with you how we incorporate a Young Scholars Guide to the Composers – I think it is going to be the direct step we will need this year to keep us on a weekly path!

Share with us – what you are planning – as you study the Composers!