Music and the Home School: More Unit Study Lists

Music is one of the things in home school that seems to be the hardest to incorporate. I have, in past posts, made lists of music that could be used along with science and history lessons to help bring things together in an artful and well-rounded way. After scouring iTunes and the internet thoroughly, I've found some real treasures I want to share with you. I am so thankful for iTunes "preview" feature that allows me to listen before buying.


We use Christian Cottage Unit Studies (which is a Charlotte Mason approach to history and science). Everything I do, except maybe math, revolves around this─music, foreign language, art, reading...


This "list" of music appreciation listening is going to follow the run of unit studies that are in this curriculum. But, they can be used for just about any curriculum since these are topics that are covered in pretty much all classrooms.

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Music Appreciation for Roots and Relations: The Foundation of Civilizations Unit Study 

Listen to Haydn’s The Creation  (this is a whole 2 disc listening experience, so there are no other ‘assignments’ for this unit)

                        or for younger students

"Creation of the World" by Darius Milhaud

Music Appreciation for Light and Matter Unit Study

Listen to “Light” by Hans Zimmer from The Thin Red Line soundtrack

Music Appreciation for Early Civilizations Unit Study

Listen to Ancient Lyre music by Michael Levy

·       An Ancient Lyre

·       Echoes of Ancient Ur

·       Hurrian Hymn  No. 6 (c.1400BCE) Ancient Mesopotamian Musical Fragment

Listen to EL-HAWZI by Hossam Ramzy (Egyptian Rai)

Listen to Dulab Huzam by George Dimitri Sawa (The Art of the Early Egyptian Qanun)

Listen to Ancient Memories by Derek Bell (The Mystic Harp)

•  Learn what a harp looks and sounds like
•  Learn what a lyre looks and sounds like
•  Learn what a Qanun (kanun) looks and sounds like and where it originates from

Music Appreciation for Oceanography Unit Study

Listen to “Tsunami” from the album Bending the Light: Chamber Works…

Listen to “La Mer” by Debussy

Listen to “A Sea Symphony” by Vaughan Williams

Listen to “Sea Preludes” by Douglas Lilburn

Listen to “Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium” by Camille Saint-Saëns

Music Appreciation for Greece and Rome Unit Study

Listen to “Roman Banquet” by Michael Levy

Listen to “The First Delphic Hymn to Apollo” (c. 138 BCE) Ancient Greek Musical Fragment by Michael Levy

Listen to “Song Seikilos” (1^st Century Greek Song) by San Antonio Vocal Arts Ens.

Listen to ”Ancient Dance” by Petros Tabouris Ensemble

Listen to “Pompei” by Synaulia (music from Ancient Rome Vol.1)

Listen to “Lamentation of Tekmessa” by Christodoulos Halaris

• Research some of the Roman Musical Instruments such as the Roman Tuba, askaules, aulos, and the syrinx

 

Music Appreciation for Weather Unit Study 

Listen to Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”

Listen to “Stormy Weather” by Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra

Listen to “Thunder and Lightning Polka” by Johann Strauss Jr.  

Listen to “Wind” by Peter Davison

Music Appreciation for Middle Ages Unit Study

Listen to Music for a Medieval Banquet by Drew Minter, Judish Malafronte, Mary Springfels, and Newberry Consort

Listen to “Medieval Music: Laudario di Contona” by Vocal Ensemble of Montpellier

Listen to “Salterello” by The Dufay Collective

Listen to “Medieval Dance Music” from the album Indroducing Continuum

• Learn what “chant” sounds like and where it began
• Learn about the beginnings of written music

Music Appreciation for Bread of Life: Birds, Biomes, Bugs, and Bodies Unit Study

Listen to:

BUGS
Franz Schubert's Der Einsame D 800 (The Hermit)
Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos, Book VI, BB 105, No. 142, From the Diary of a Fly
Ralph Vaughan Williams' Overture to the Wasp
Modest Mussorgsky's Mephistopheles’s Song Of The Flea
Chet Atkins' Centipede Boogie
Thomas Arne's Where The Bee Sucks There Lurk I
Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee
Kalevi Aho's Insect Symphony (7th Symph.)
Bela Bartok's Night Music
Roussel's The Spider's Feast
Ralph Vaughn Williams' The Wasps Suite
Tchaikovsky's Chorus of Insects
Grieg's La Papillon (The Butterfly)

ANIMALS
Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals
J. S. Bach's Where My Sheep Safely Graze
Rossini's La Boutique fantasque: Galop (horses)
Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake
Respighi's Prelude from The Birds
Anderson's The Waltzing Cat 
 
PLANTS
Jonas Forssell: I begynnelsen (The Kingdom of Plants),
Lakmé: The Flower Duet (BBC Concert Orchestra),
Don Quixote: Flower Walt


Music Appreciation for Astronomy Unit Study

Listen to The Planets by Gustav Holst (this is, again, a whole album of listening, so it’s the only ‘assignment’ for this unit)

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That brings us to the end of the the first volume of Christian Cottage Unit Studies. If you are interested in seeing some of what is included in these unit studies, please see my posts on Year One, Year Two, and Year Three or check out their website linked at the beginning of this post. 

FREE RESOURCES: MODEL CUT-OUTS

I love free stuff. I love finding treasures online that mean all I have to do is turn on my printer and press a button. Here are couple that I think you might like:


CANON CREATIVE PARK ~ Tons of paper craft model printables, some complex, some simple

PAPER TOYS ~ paper models for kids and grown-ups alike

MORE FREE STUFF

I can't beat the freebies from TOS, but I've got a few up my sleeve. Here are some new ones I found recently. Three cheers for home schooling on a shoe-string!

Homeschool Helper "Homeschoolers helping each other."
Preschool Printables (just in case I haven't linked it yet)

Tapestry of Grace Arts and Craft Ideas  (some way cool stuff in here, these go really well as supplemental ideas for the curriculum we use, Christian Cottage Unit Studies)

Year 1~Ancient History and Early Christianity
Year 2~Middle Ages, Renaissance, Early America
Year 3~Early America and the world at that time
Year 4~The 20th Century to Current

Just had to share these marvelous paper crafts. I am in total AWE!
Stock up on some paper and ink, and go to town!

Canon Paper Crafts

Make sure to check out the left side menu for Science, History, and Architecture crafts!

Music and the Home School

Home school families have the unique opportunity to link music and art into the areas they're already studying in science and history. Because there is a disconnect in the public school between the "arts" and the "studies", there is typically less of an understanding in these areas. I'm hoping that this post will help home school families find a way to bridge that gap.


Many home school families struggle with how to teach or incorporate music and art into their day. There seems to be little time and sometimes lack of training can be an issue. Here are some thoughts that may help.


Music history has been broken down into eras. The composers and styles of these eras can be linked to historical time frames. Where writing and reading sometimes fail to describe a particular event or time frame adequately, music can step in and build a brain picture.

Here are some historical eras to start with:

450-1450 Middle Ages: music was involved in the spread of the Church, Islam was being spread and much of its music was influential at the time, Europe was beginning to develop

Music Styles: recorder, medieval music, monophonic music (Gregorian chant)

Composers: Hildegard von Bingen, Moniot d'Arras, Guillaume de Machaut

1450-1600 Renaissance: music was viewed as a cultural growth, this time was considered a rebirth, a new world was being formed, science and the arts were beginning to take a new form 

Music Styles: madrigals, toccata, prelude, dance music 
Composers: Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

1600-1750 Baroque: music became involved in the "experimentalism" of the new modern world

Music Styles: voice and instruments together, basso continuo

Composers:  Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach

1750-1825 Classical: Industrial Revolution, Enlightenment, republican government, nature in the arts 

Music Styles: Piano solos, Sonatas

Composers: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven

1825-1900 Romantic: nationalism, exotics,  science and mysticism in music

Music Styles: program music

Composers: Franz Schubert, Giuseppe Verdi, Clara Schumann, Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Antonin Dvorák, Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy 

1900-present 20th Century: age of technology 

Music Styles: World Music, Pop Music, Improv

Composers: Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein
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If this doesn't help, I've broken down some of the popular units that may be studied and added some musical compositions/composers that could be incorporated:

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Science:

Astronomy- Gustav Holst: The Planets Suite

Animals- Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals

Oceans and Seas-  Henry Kimball Hadley: The Ocean, Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium

Weather/Seasons- Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

Bugs/Insects- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumble Bee

Plants- Jonas Forssell: I begynnelsen (The Kingdom of Plants),

            Lakmé: The Flower Duet (BBC Concert Orchestra),

              Don Quixote: Flower Waltz

Historical Events and People:

Westward Expansion- Aaron Copland

1941 Seige of Leningrad- Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60

Duke of Wellington- Ludwig van Beethoven: Wellington's Victory

War of 1812- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture

Ottoman Empire- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave

Hiroshima- Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima

Mount St. Helens- Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 50

Creation- Joseph Haydn: The Creation

I'd love to have comments on any others you can think of!! This is definitely not an exhaustive list!

Some books and sites I've found helpful:

The Story of the Orchestra 

The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

Sergei Prokofeiv's Peter and the Wolf  

Carnival of the Animals 

Meet the Orchestra 

Tubby the Tuba

The Nutcracker: Based on the Classic Story by E.T.A. Hoffmann

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Classical Pieces that Mark Historical Events (thread) 

Greg's Science Song Music (just for fun)

Classical Music Lapbook (squidoo.com)

Coloring Planet 

Essentials of Music

Year Three

The boys spent a week of their summer vacation time in a play put together by the Missoula Children's Theatre group. They performed a wonderfully rehearsed version of Sleeping Beauty. Check them out. They travel around the world to help communities build their children into colorful performers.

This school year started with a field trip. We actually took the field trip prior to the start of our official school year, but since it fit in so well with our first unit study, I'm claiming it as a field trip. Our first unit was on the Middle Ages. Just before moving away from Turkey, we took a trip to Antioch. Between our base and Antioch was a small Medieval style castle with a mote around it. It wasn't open since we got there late in the day, but we were able to peek inside the gates into the open courtyard. We also took a climb up onto the top of the gatehouse and saw the 'potty' that hung over the edge of the mote.

The kids very much enjoyed looking over the edge. It drove me crazy. I'm always afraid something might come crashing down and they'll go down with it.

After we returned to the States, the kids tried their hand at making a castle. My brother picked up a huge load of refrigerator boxes at a warehouse and they put them together in the back yard of my parents' house. A great battle ensued.

I'm pretty sure the dog won.

Once we started the 'official' school year (I say official because I believe that learning doesn't quit in the summer months), we had a great Medieval feast involving turkey legs, bread bowls, wassail and song, hot cross buns, bread pudding, a potato juggler, some wonderful Medieval music found on iTunes, and some very talented recorder players.

As you can see, Ethan devoured his turkey leg in fairly short order.

Once again, costumes were a part of the deal, with everyone from grandparents to aunts, uncles, and cousins playing along. We rattled some closet doors in search of proper wear.

After the feast came the games. We had jousting in the yard, but since we had no horses, the Lord of the Castle and the Surveyor of Ceremonies played the part.

I found a wonderful Medieval Castle model for David to make. It was a lot of cutting. Usborne does it right, though. It was a well made model, pretty cheap to buy, and very detailed. It even had a 'potty.'

I found some other fun additions for our curriculum at the home school convention this spring:

History of Costume Series: Medieval Costumes Paper Dolls by Tom Tierney

Knights in Armor Paper Dolls by A.G. Smith

Draw and Write Through History: The Vikings, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance
Fun, free castle stuff for kids: http://www.castles.org/index.htm
More castle stuff for kids: http://www.rencentral.com/kidskingdom/onceuponatime.shtml

Since Ethan finally hit the 1st grade, I started him in on the Christian Cottage Unit Studies as well. Instead of having the two boys in the same unit, I started him at the beginning with Roots and Relations. Here is his model of a cell. See post on Our First Year for what's in it.

We also started a fun art program this year. Another Usborne Book! They have several awesome art books available, of which I have two. I love them. The kids seem to enjoy the activities as well. I added a mosaic lesson to the book to start the year as a review of Greek and Roman art styles.

They did a wonderful job of patiently pushing their stone tiles into air drying clay.

David chose to make a design of a raft and a sea monster. He and I were reading Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne at the time, and it quickly became a favorite.

After putting together the globe puzzle he got from his Aunt for his birthday, he made sure to locate Reykjavík and point it out.

David's next unit study was called Bread of Life: Biomes, Birds, Bugs, and Bodies. We used our Teaching Tank, a wonderful home school tool that I think every family should have, to watch some plants grow both up and down. I should have taken more photos of the stages.

We also had fun making a life sized chart of the digestive system. I had David lay down on a big sheet of tag board. I traced his body and then he drew out the organs, colored them, and labeled them.

We ordered tadpoles for our Planet Frog. (see post titled Villain of the Moment, Hero of the Day) We're still watching them grow.

We also went through a lot on food chains, eating healthy, biomes, and plant parts.

While David was knee deep into plants, bugs, and body parts, Ethan was working through his Light and Matter studies. We pulled out the periscope that David made two years ago and fixed it up. We also got as a gift a fun kit that helped out with some of the concepts.

ScienceWiz Light Experiment Kit

David moved on to an Astronomy unit and made a nifty model of the solar system.

It only cost $10.00 at our local craft supply store. He typed up some short reports that he did on each planet and added them to the model. We're thinking about entering it in the State Fair art competition this summer. I also put up some fun solar system window clingers. All three kiddos have enjoyed looking at them. I read a really thought provoking excerpt from The Witness of the Stars by E.W. Bullinger. It outlined the original meaning of the zodiac - the Gospel written in the stars. Definitely worth a read! (There's a short excerpt in All Through the Ages: History Through Literature Guide by Christine Miller...it's one of my most recommended resources.)

The kids also had some fun with our National Geographic Star Planetarium.

Ethan then moved into the Early Civilizations unit (which we're still working on currently). We've had a chance to refine some of the activities I did with David in his first year to make them a bit better. I have yet to figure out a good way to make a wax sealing ring. Any ideas? Oven baked clay doesn't work. The wax sticks to it.

The oil lamp was much easier with oven baked clay.

We did a repeat with the little Phoenician boats.

Ethan tried a new Egyptian craft. He made a makeup box out of cardboard. He did a fabulous job of painting it.

We tried our hand at mummification at this BBC site and made another shaduf.

Our first year, we tried making ancient coins out of cardboard. This year, using oven baked clay, they looked much more realistic.

Something to try for next time: Make a ziggurat out of sugar cubes and sprinkle brown sugar over the top.

Then we went for the big-time and ordered a beautiful Tabernacle model kit from The Tabernacle Place. They have a step-by-step tutorial on how to paint it for better details. I printed off the free Sunday School lessons from the site and we learned a ton. It required a lot of adult supervision and help, but was definitely worth the time we put into it. I was having a really hard time with the paper model included in our curriculum. It was pretty flimsy and, after all the work put into it, was sort of disappointing.

After David finished the Astronomy unit, he moved into the Mediterranean Region and is revisiting a lot of what we learned in the Early Civilization unit. He's studying a lot of Israeli history. It has worked out wonderfully. Both boys are working together on some projects while David has a chance to look more deeply into some of the meaning. They both worked on the Tabernacle and we had a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean feast that fit into both units. I'm hoping we can all work together on some timelines as well.

God works in such wonderful ways. As I've been home schooling, things have fallen into place so beautifully. They are not things that I could've orchestrated so well. As David came up on the close of his Astronomy unit, I realized that we would be looking at Israel next. We happen to have a very close friend who is a Messianic Jew. She is quite versed in the Jewish culture and their holidays, feasts, and festivals. I asked her to look through the unit prior to our starting it. As the time approached, she pointed out that Passover and Easter were also approaching. The first section of the unit covers Jewish holidays. One of the first things that the unit study suggests is to have a Passover meal - a Seder. The chapel that we attend asked my friend to put together a Seder, but because there wasn't enough interest from the general population, she ended up doing it for our Bible study group instead.

The timing was perfect. Our two boys and another family of girls learned the Ma Nishtana (four questions) in Hebrew to sing for the meal ceremony. We found an mp3 recording online that helped us learn the proper pronounciation. I heard them wandering around the house singing it for weeks. It was a beautiful and eye-opening experience. I'll add photos and possibly a video when I get them uploaded.

David is currently working on making a miniature succoth with the hopes that it can be used for his army men in the future.

We also started a dreidel, but I can't find the drill, so it'll have to wait a few more days. I'm hoping I can find the time to try out a recipe for Potato Latkes and put together the inexpensive 'potato' menorah over the weekend. Next week we move on to Northern Africa!