Beethoven Composer Study

We are studying Ludwig van Beethoven for this term and have really enjoyed his music so far. He has such a vast repertoire of music to listen to that it is hard to choose a favorite album! We have been listening to this album off Amazon during breakfast, art times or quiet times:

In addition, we are slowly reading through this book by Opal Wheeler:

 

These next books/movies are what we are planning to finish out the term reading and listening to:

This book from our library.

This interactive book that we might consider buying if we like it enough!

This book that introduces the symphony to children using Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

This book about the Heroic Symphony that also teaches about history!

This movie from the Classical Kids series.

I also came across a very large PDF download from homeschoolshare.com that we might take a few pages from to round out our study.

So that's about it for Beethoven! We are really enjoying learning more about him and have a greater appreciation for his musicianship knowing more about his hearing loss/deafness. What an amazing gift he was given.

Beethoven's penny

I had to include this picture of the girls listening to Beethoven's "Rage Over a Lost Penny" piano piece.

I asked them to listen and see if Beethoven ever found his lost penny... their conclusion was yes, he did find it. This is now one of Louisa's favorite Beethoven pieces.

If you want to listen, here is a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFPkfRoe9jA

Tchaikovsky Composer Study

This term's composer is Peter Tchaikovsky, probably best known (in America) for The Nutcracker! We love The Nutcracker over here at our house and I knew that this year I would be taking Louisa on a special trip to see the Joffrey Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker, so I intentionally chose Tchaikovsky as this term's composer. I was able to take Kailyn to see it a few years ago and we had a blast, however, Louisa hasn't really let me forget that she was not able to go so I decided that this is the year we would go! And here is our one (terrible) picture that we took of us:

Anyways, we had a great time at the ballet and Louisa was VERY excited to see it. It's a long performance and I knew it would be hard to sit through but she really didn't start to get antsy until the end.

So, for our Tchaikovsky composer study, we have been listening to Tchaikovsky's greatest moments (here via Amazon Prime music), and here for the Nutcracker music.

I must admit that Tchaikovsky has been much harder to listen to after Bach. My girls all grew to love Bach and his music. His is methodical and harmonious while Tchaikovsky's music is grand, very big, and all over the place. I am sure he will grow on us and listening to the Nutcracker sure helps. Kailyn also has been playing Swan Lake on the piano, so she loves him for that piece alone already. And, we didn't know that he composed the original Sleeping Beauty music!

We started off the term by listening to this program from Classics for Kids. They are always fun, short and interesting. I love the music added in to the program.

We also used this free printable last week (Nutcracker puppets to color) and the girls loved that. They colored them and cut them out while I read to them this book:

Honestly, I was expecting a little more about the creation of the ballet itself and there truly was very little mention of it. It was a nice book about that time of his life where he was traveling the world and creating ballets. We also have this book, which I am hoping will give a little more background to his life:

The other book we are currently reading is this Nutcracker version:

So far, we love it. It is not too simple (like so many of them are) and is the original storyline from Hoffman. The drawings are so beautiful, too! The girls are intrigued by the original story and it helps to make more sense of the ballet!!

So, apart from these things, we plan to simply listen to a lot of his music each day and I might see if I can find a good story book about his Swan Lake ballet, but that's only if there's time! :)

Bach composer study

So, we're studying J.S. Bach this term (I love Bach!!!) and I knew that really all I needed to do was have the girls be immersed in his music but of course, I wanted to do more,  and I figured if I can be of any help to another mom who stumbles across this looking for ideas on Bach, wonderful!!

I looked at quite a few websites and tried to get an idea of what others were doing but I didn't want to pay for anything when I could come up with my own stuff for free.  I had the girls read Opal Wheeler's book, Sebastian Bach, Boy from Thuringia, and it was wonderful. I love her books and the girls really learned a lot and appreciated him so much more after reading the book. We also plan to read aloud Thomas Tapper's The Story of the Boy Who Sang in the Streets. It was a free download onto my Kindle app and is a shorter book but it has real life pictures in it which the girls might appreciate.

I also went to this website and searched for Bach and had the girls listen to the short stories during lunch. They loved this and really enjoyed the music clips played throughout.

I'm an Amazon Prime member, so I was able to stream free Bach music onto my iPad and we listen to that ALL the time. Pretty much on repeat. If I need a change of selection, I put on the YouTube channel with Bach's violin music but I prefer Amazon's streaming.

I also typed up a music history era page and printed it off so they could see where Bach fit into history and what his time period is called.

I think I am also going to have each of them learn Minuet in G or a simpler version (for Louisa) since they both play the piano and that's about the right difficulty level for Kailyn.

                    "The aim and final end of all music is none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." J.S. Bach