We have been studying Frederick Chopin with this wonderful homeschool music program, Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades from Zeezok Publishing.
What is Included
The Music Appreciation for the Middle Grades from Zeezok Publishing is designed for grades 5 through 8 and is the 2nd book in the Music Appreciation series from Zeezok Publishing. Meeting all national standards required for music appreciate accreditation, the Music Appreciate for the Middle Grades program is a complete program that your student will enjoy while learning about music appreciation.
The program includes one student book and 9 illustrated biographies to complete the program. The program covers 7 composers each taking 4 to 5 weeks to study the composer. The composer include:
- Frederic Chopin
- Robert Schumann
- Richard Wagner
- Stephen Foster
- Johannes Brahms
- Peter Tchaikovsky
- Edwards MacDowell
The Student Workbook
The Music Appreciation for Middle Grades student workbook contains a variety of activities and topics to help the student learn about the composer that is being studied. Activities included in the lessons surrounding the study of each composer including geography, history, grammar, character trait studies, and music studies to name a few.
Additionally, each composer study includes QR codes to allow the student to quickly access music by the composers. The QR codes were easy to use and fun addition. There were also interactive quizzes and other website links to help build on what the student workbook and biographies included. There are activities for every learning study (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) as well as for multiple age groups, making it easy to include younger or older students along in the learning.
The student workbook has a variety of activities that are fun for the student to use to expand their learning about the composers. Each lesson includes several activities like
Additionally, the Student Workbook includes some activity pages to test student learning and progress. The study can fill in the pages, answering questions about what they have learned.
The Biographies
In addition to the student workbook, Music Appreciation for the Middle Grades includes 9 illustrated biographies covering 7 different composers. The author, Opal Wheeler, explores the lives and events that influenced the music these famous composers created. The student learns about the people, places, and events that influenced these masters. There is every sheet music from the composers for the students to see (and maybe even play).
What We Thought
The activities included in the Student Workbook expound on what is covered in the Student Workbook reading as well as the biographies that correspond. The lessons for each composer are 4-5 weeks long and are laid out in an easy format to go through a few days a week each week.
The lessons take approximately 30 minutes to go through but could go longer if you really get into the extras and activities. When you utilize the included QR codes for the composer, you can get lost in the extras with the extra music and information included, like the website information for the composer.
The additional activities and reading comprehension are good as well. We wrote some of the exercises and we used the questions as a way to ask comprehension questions orally. We liked to do some of the exercises orally and some written.
We enjoyed reading the biographies together. Originally written in the 1940s, the illustrations are indicative of this time period, but the books are very fun to read and informative for the whole family. The kids did a great job working together reading about these great composers. Overall, we all liked the biographies and the workbook was a great compliment to extend the learning for our middle schooler. Though we used it with our younger student as well, she mostly listened along and didn’t do many of the activities. However, it would be easy to scale them down to do some and could definitely be used by a high school student who has not already studied these composers.
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