A Young Scholor's Guide to Composers

I told you recently that I was accepted as part of Timberdoodle's Review team, and I am very excited to be able to share a new Composer Curriculum with you.

A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers by Bright Ideas Press, is your dream come true curriculum for studying the composers.

I love Charlotte Mason's methods, and have always wanted to study the composers, but it has always seemed so complicated. The curriculum that was out there either wasn't simple enough, or I had to try to piece it together myself, which for me, was no easy feat.

I have several books on different composers, but didn't know what else to pull in to make a complete study.

I don't have to worry about that any longer. A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers has been such blessing in this area.

Let me tell you a little bit about how it works.

This program includes:

• 32 Weekly Lessons
• 26 Bios of Famous Composers
• 6 Eras of Music Explained
• Easy-to-Use Comparative Timeline
• Easy-to-Use Maps
• Composer Info-Cards & Game Directions
• Note-taking Pages
• Quizzes
• Answer Keys
• Listening Suggestions
• Intricate Coloring Pages
• Resource Books

I will admit that at first I was a little confused on how to use this program. It does not tell you what to do for each composer, but rather gives you the guidelines to use for each composer in the beginning of the study. Once you complete one composer though, it is easy to understand. I guess I just needed to actually do everything once before I could completely understand how it all worked. 

In the beginning you will study four musical periods:

The Baroque Period

The Classical Period

The Romantic Period

The Contemporary Period 

Then you will study composers from these time periods throughout the year. You will study composers such as:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ludwig van Beethoven

Antonio Vivaldi

Johann Sebastian Bach

George Gershwin

For the four musical time periods your child will take notes as they listen to you read aloud, or they could take notes as they themselves read. 

I really liked this aspect and took the opportunity to read to my daughter and let her practice her note taking skills. I told her to read all of the questions ahead of time so that she would know what to listen for. Here is an example of the note taking pages:

For the composers you will read around 3 pages per composer. You will learn about their life, their work, their character, their religion, or lack thereof, who they were influenced by, or who they may have influenced. 

After you read about a composer your child will have a student review to fill out. 

Your child will also fill out a composer info card, fill out a timeline, a map, and will put all of this into a folder book. 

I don't have any pictures of a folder book because we just couldn't figure out how to put it all together the way they showed in the book. Here is the picture from the book. The timelines that they have in the book though are different than the ones shown here. They are much bigger. That is why we had trouble putting it together in the way shown.

For now we are just keeping everything in a folder until we can figure out how we want to put it together. 

We are using this as a family. I am reading it aloud while my children color the included coloring pages. 

This program is suggested for grades 4-8, but I think you can easliy use it in younger or older grades as well. 

My daughter is 14 and in 9th grade, so I am mainly using this with her, but my 6 year old son listens in and colors the pictures. And of course he also listens to the music with us. It is a great way for him to be introduced to this type of music. When he gets older he can fully do this program. 

There is a suggested schedule included in the book. We are pretty much following this schedule. 

You can follow this schedule or go along as you see fit. We homeschoolers are great at making things work for us, aren't we?

One thing that I really appreciate is that this is written from a christian company. They try to be careful of what they include in their writings, and they have the children look into the lives of the composers to see if they can tell if they were a christian, and why or why not they came to that conclusion. 

We have really been enjoying this study. This is not something that I thought I would ever say. lol

We will probably stretch it out and make it last longer than one year. We will probably do one time period at a time and then take a break. 

I highly recommend A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers for your family. I think you will really enjoy it. Now, we haven't gotten through the whole thing yet, so there may be content that you may find inappropriate for younger ones, I don't know. I haven't seen anything, but I haven't read every word yet either. I just wanted you to know that. But from what we have done, I absolutely recommend it. I really love it. 

If you are interested in purchasing A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers you can do so here. 

The list price is $34.95, but Timberdoodle has it for $31.50 plus you'll earn 32 Doodle Dollar Points. 

Be sure to check out what others thought of A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers. 

Timberdoodle also has other great music products that you may want to check out. Some of it would go nicely with this composer study. 

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As a member of Timberdoodle's Blogger Review Team I received a free copy of A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers in exchange for a frank and unbiased review.