Now Taking Your Music Questions!
Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 9:20AM 
March is officially Music In Our Schools Month, so I thought it would be fitting to do a series of posts entitled "Music in our Homeschool" this month. Do you use music in your homeschool? Is it a separate subject? Do you use a specific curriculum? Does your child play a musical instrument?
My undergraduate degree is in Music Education, with an emphasis on piano performance, and I taught for ten years in the public schools before I had children. I also have been teaching piano privately on and off for the past twenty years. In short, I love music, and I feel like I've gotten a lot of great ideas in my bag of tricks.
We use music daily in our homeschool, from listening to music, to singing and dancing, to learning to play the piano. It's just a part of our everyday lives. Is there anything specific you'd like to know? As I plan out my posts, I'll try to answer any questions you may have, so ASK AWAY!
Reader Comments (9)
Sheridan takes piano lessons. He took group lessons from Sept-Dec (part of enrichment classes) and now we have added private lessons. For age 5, we have been told that he is quite good. I have NO musical training so some days have been quite comical as I help him. We look at music as an essential part of our curriculum just like math, reading, etc.
We listen to all types of music during the day. Sheridan particularly likes Chinese, Big Band, and Show Tunes.
My question: we have found an excellent piano teacher and love her. However, I had a feeling a couple of years ago that Sheridan would be good at piano. I asked a family friend who teaches piano about lessons and she stated that she refuses to teach children under the age of 8! Says they are too wiggly and have no attention span. What are your thoughts?
Kim ~ GREAT question!! This is something I will be discussing this week on the blog!
I have questions too. For starters, what DO you recommend for teaching a child piano? I guess I mean a few different things with that.
1. What, if any, are your favorite piano curricula? We're using Alfred Premier Piano course with Makayla, it is just what I had sitting there. I did not do any looking around, and her piano teacher is a friend from church, she said we would just use whatever we had.
2. What age do you like to see a child start private lessons? Makayla started at 9 becasue that is when we found a teacher we could afford. That teacher is willing to teach all the kids, I just don't know when to start them The next two in age are Joseph (6.5) and Emma 5.
3. How fast would a child progress who began at age 9? Makayla started 6 months ago today. She's nearly done with the level 1A and likes to play pieces from other extra books too. I'm just wondering what is a normal pace to expect to be buying new levels. We just bought level 1B and I find I have no idea how long it will last. I would like to catch a sale for the next level...
4. For music education in general - what do you think is important? I have no experience in this area so we just make it up. For example, we learn songs each week (hymns/childrens hymns), we listen to music by a variety of artists/composers, and we study a composer every so often. We work on rhythm and dynamics (loud/medium/soft), but that's about it.
I can't wait to read your posts about music!! So fun!
Ditto Tristan's questions! We've started learning the recorder, would love to start piano.
Tristan, all awesome questions!! I will get to them in posts this week! Thanks for such a thoughtful comment.
Hi Mary! What a great idea! I can't believe that I haven't thought about "Music In Our Schools Month" for such a long time! I enjoyed that time of the year and getting some new ideas from MENC and songs to work on with my classes when I was teaching music! This is a great discussion!
Hello again! You inspired me to write my own post about making music with children. I hope you don't mind that I shared a link to this post on your page. Have a great week!
My children are 4 and 7 and we just bought a Melissa and Doug Deluxe Band Set. And my kids enjoy 'playing' with it http://cowsdontmoo.com/2011/03/music-to-my-ears-thank-you/ (has a video of them playing with it) but I also would like to teach them how to read simple music, about tempo and such, do you know of any free resources for this.
I would love to know more about music appreciation and how to incorporate it into our day. Right now I had my husband make CD of different types of music such as, early rock, country, jazz, beatles and we listen (and sing) while driving around town. Great idea for a post:)