I am part of the Homeschool Review Crew. All opinions are my own.
Since music was a major love of mine and also what I studied with Juiliard, I've been searching for a music appreciation program for Mary. I love introducing music to kids when they're young because of so many reasons. It's makes them learn better, gives them an appreciation for music at a young age and I believe it makes them smarter. So when we had the chance to check out Music Appreciation I from Memoria Press, we couldn't have been happier.
Memoria Press is known for its classical Christian educational materials like Prima Latina & Traditional Spelling I which are perfect for homeschool. The Music Appreciation I set studies Western Classical music that starts before Mozart and goes all the way up to the time of Aaron Copeland's Hoedown with ambient acoustic guitar.
The set includes a workbook with the lessons inside and two audio CD's. Starting a lesson is super easy and doesn't take any planning on the part of the parent.
A typical lesson consists of learning the historical background of the composer, the foundational musical concepts like pitch and rhythm of the piece, and then background on the piece as well. To accompany the musical concepts, that's where you'll use the audio CD's so you can follow along by listening to the concept they're focusing on. In some pieces, it was pitch and then in others it was something else like form.
I think the only thing I was disappointed in was that the audio CD's didn't contain the entire length of the song for each lesson. The CD's were just short excerpts of the pitch, rhythm, or other concept. So to let Mary listen to each song in its entirety, I went to YouTube for her to hear it.
There were over twenty lessons and after every four lessons, there was a test in the back of the book. The test consisted of learning the terms of the musical concepts, the background of the composer and song and then listening to an excerpt of the song to identify it by the sound of it.
We were able to finish the entire workbook within two months because we enjoyed it so much. Mary really looked forward to learning about the different songs and she even learned some new ones she fell in love with!
This set is almost like music theory which discusses notes and musical terms so if you don't have a strong musical background, you might want to take a little longer on each lesson to familiarize yourself with all the terms. Music theory can be confusing at first but once you understand it, it will be easier to understand what the music is saying.
In my personal opinion, I think Music Appreciation I would be best for upper elementary grades from 4-6 because of the music theory in it. Right now Mary is in 4th grade and it worked quite well for us.
If you're interested in learning more, check out the other crew reviews with the link below!
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