More on Music

The kids had so much fun sequencing the different changes in Handel’s Royal Fireworks music.

As you can tell, my son really got into it. As the music changed from loud to soft, they made a pattern with our fireworks cards: big fireworks, little firecracker, big fireworks, little firecracker, big fireworks. Then we counted how many times the music was big and how many times the music was small (loud and soft). The changes are very distinct, and both the kids did really well with the exercise, much better than I anticipated.

Another activity that we’ve added to our study has been identifying instruments. We’ve started with the brass family for now, since these and the wind instruments were the primary players in Handel’s original production. (King George I had said he did not want strings! But Handel stubbornly added the strings in later performances of the pieces.)

Anyway, my son especially got into this activity. He loves anything music related. And I got the kit of cards for free from CurrClick.com! The cards include instruments and labels for all the instrument families, including many instruments that I’ve never seen or heard of before.

After this week, we head back to Handel’s Water Music. We’ll sequence some of those pieces as well, now that the kids have a good idea of how to do it. We will also learn more from Handel’s bio, and study the brass, woodwinds, and strings instruments. My plan is to have the kids learn to identify the instruments by sight and by sound (as much as we can get through).

I can’t believe summer is almost over! We have really enjoyed our laid-back summer schedule. It truly has been a great success, very little planning and structure on my part and just enough structure to give the kids something to look forward to each day. That said, both kids seem eager to get the real school going with complete workboxes and even the timer!  So that, too, tells me that it’s been just the break we needed. I couldn’t be more pleased with how my summer experiment turned out.