Living Unabridged

This year at our co-op I am teaching a music history class for 4th-6th graders.

I am also the Director of the co-op (78 families / 220 children). That's a big job in itself *coughs modestly* so I am not always able to take on a big teaching job in addition to my other responsibilities. (I do usually end up teaching something. Last year was a phonics class based on the Bob Books, and I've taught a Fallacy Detective / Logic class a few times. All fun. I truly enjoy teaching!)

But anyway, this year my music history class is just a lovely island of joy in the middle of my co-op day. I have only five students in the class (4 girls, 1 boy) and they are just the sweetest kids.

We're a few weeks in and here are my favorite resources I've used for the class so far.

1. Time Traveler's Guide to Music History Book 1 and Book 2

I used this two book set to put together my syllabus. The books start in Ancient Times (I consulted other resources to focus on Music in Bible times for the first week of class) and cover all the way to modern day.

I stumbled on these books by accident at our library book store so they may be a bit tricky to find. But if you teach music or piano I do recommend them!

2. Opal Wheeler biographies

Way back in 2016 I had the opportunity to review Zeezok's music curriculum. At the time I didn't realize what a treasure these Opal Wheeler biographies were, even though I had a least one vintage edition in my personal library. (It wasn't one of the titles from the first Zeezok set.)

Anyway, now I know what gems these are, I've added several more to our collection. (I'm always watching for them in thrift stores.)

In my music class we've only covered Bach thus far, but Sebastian Bach: The Boy from Thuringia was so popular my students were begging me to read longer. (I told you they were the sweetest kids.)

In the end we didn't have time for the entire biography, even though we had two weeks dedicated to Bach, and one student ended up borrowing the book. These are Living Books at their best!

3. Maestro Classics

Our family still loves this series!

I used
Bach and the Pipe Organ during our two weeks on Bach.

This Monday we'll be starting a two week unit on Handel and I will be breaking out a family favorite:

My Name is Handel.
(Our family still sings "My name is Handel, George Frederic Handel! The other composers, they can't hold a candle to me..." when we hear the Water Music theme.)

Of course we'll also be using Wheeler's Handel at the Court of Kings and a few other picture books.

4. Teachers Pay Teachers

Our class format means I do a lot of reading aloud or mini-lecturing, and we're putting together a music history notebook for each student.

I always allow students to color or doodle while I read. There wasn't a ready made curriculum (Zeezok is good, but I wanted to cover more than it included) so I'm basically putting together the resources myself.

I've found so many great printables and notebooking pages on Teachers Pay Teachers. Many of these I already had in my personal files (I teach piano so I'm always watching for these kinds of things) but others I find as I plan ahead for the composer of the week.

I try to make sure we have a coloring page (black and white picture of the composer), biography page, map of where they lived or worked, and some other activity page (crossword, puzzle, etc.) for each week (or each composer, anyway, we spend two weeks on most of them). This keeps hands busy while I read, or while we listen to music selections together.

So, Teachers Pay Teachers is well worth signing up for, is what I'm saying. It's free to make an account and there are all sorts of resources for all sorts of subjects. (Free and otherwise. That's not an affiliate link, by the way. I just like the site.)

I've also put together a YouTube playlist for the class, which is fun. Minus all the adds, of course, which are not always...appropriate. I've gotten pretty good at turning my computer away for a few seconds!

5. Other Picture Books

These are two favorites from the past weeks:
Becoming Bach by Tom Leonard. Simpler than the Wheeler biography but the illustrations are gorgeous. We used this to recap what we had learned the previous two weeks.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons by Anna Harwell Celenza. This is a lovely book / cd combo. After two weeks on Bach, we moved on to Vivaldi and the kids loved this book and hearing about the orphan musicians (girls!) Vivaldi taught.

Our co-op year is divided into two 13 week semesters. My syllabus for the first semester looked like this:
1. Ancient Music / Music in the Bible / Music around the World
2. Music in the Middle Ages / Gregorian Chant
3. Baroque Period / Bach
4. Bach (week 2)
5. Baroque Period / Vivaldi
6. Baroque / Pre-Classical / Handel
7. Handel (week 2)
8. Classical Period / Haydn
9. Haydn (week 2)
10. Classical / Mozart
11. Mozart (week 2)
12. Classical / Beethoven
13. Beethoven (week 2)

Every week is my favorite. And I do get to play the piano for the kids as well, some weeks, which is fun for me.