Integrating Music Into Your Homeschool Curriculum: A Step-By-Step Guide
Designing the perfect homeschool curriculum involves not only the basics, but also many important electives such as music. Music can reinforce the learning that you are teaching in other subjects, while helping children gain a greater understanding of language, sound, and timing. Music is also a fun subject that children of all ages can enjoy, and you get the satisfaction of knowing that you are setting them up to have a lifelong love of music. If you’re looking for the best way to incorporate music into your homeschool curriculum, you can find several options right here.
Practice Music Appreciation
You don’t have to know how to play an instrument to appreciate music, and even infants and toddlers can enjoy the sound, singing, and lyrics. Music appreciation takes some research, but perhaps not as much as you think. Consider the types of music that your children already know and then look for opportunities to expand their horizons. Try different musical genres, especially those that you don’t hear on the radio or in-person very often. Be sure to include songs from different time periods, so your children get a good balance of the latest beats and the timeless classics.
Incorporate Music Into Homeschool Subjects
Although you can make music its own subject in a homeschool curriculum, you should also find ways to fit music into your other lessons. Social studies makes a great choice for music, as you can explore tunes and lyrics from hundreds of years ago. For math, use strings to demonstrate to your children how the length of the string changes the sound when you pluck it. In science lessons, you can use sounds to show how waves penetrate or reflect off hard surfaces. You can even use popular children’s rhymes and songs to help younger children learn basic information, such as ABCs or the days of the week.
Explore New Instruments
Whether you have little instrument knowledge or you already have a collection of instruments in your home, you can use this opportunity to help your children explore new ones. Children love an opportunity to test out devices, and instruments can be just as exciting as a new tablet. Arrange for a field trip to a store that sells instruments. You may be able to let your children wander and try instruments that seem interesting or get a brief demonstration of how the instruments work. Be sure to ask about instrument rentals, as they don’t require an expensive initial investment and allow your child to experiment with more instruments over time.
Consider Musical Co-Op Education
Music education doesn’t have to be exclusively a home activity especially if you have a group of homeschooling parents near you. Homeschool co-ops allow parents to organize their knowledge so that all the children get the most benefit. Creating a co-op for music education can improve your children’s music appreciation and even give them an opportunity to get free or low-cost music education. Choose one instrument for all the children to learn or set a schedule for younger children to learn a little about a new instrument every week.
Take Music Education to the Next Level
As you explore music in your home or homeschool group, you may decide that you want to take it to the next level. If you have a child with a particular interest in an instrument, you might consider signing them up for professional lessons, such as guitar lessons in Queen Creek or piano lessons in Baton Rouge. You can often choose between private lessons, group lessons, or online courses. These lessons are fairly easy to fit into your homeschool schedule and may offer self-paced options your children can do anytime. Private or group courses can give your children important social interactions and opportunities to reinforce their knowledge.
Being a homeschooling parent means that you are taking charge of your child’s education, committing yourself to providing a comprehensive and enjoyable learning experience. Music is a crucial part of the curriculum because it adds enjoyable and educational elements to any subject. By presenting different ways to teach music as part of a homeschool plan, you can build children’s music appreciation and skills for a long, music-filled life.
Author bio: Zach Meade is the owner and founder of Musicians Made. From the great Pacific Northwest, Meade has over 20 years of experience in private music lessons. Meade has a BA in music performance from Whitworth University. He has won numerous awards and accolades as a musician and has played all over the country. As a Queen Creek resident, he is a professional musician who currently works as Music Director at Desert Rock Church in Florence. He teaches private drum lessons, beginning guitar lessons and beginning piano lessons.
SOURCES
https://musicinourhomeschool.com/teach-music-in-your-homeschool
https://www.schoolofcomposition.com/how-to-teach-music-in-homeschool
https://www.hoffmanacademy.com/blog/how-to-include-music-in-your-homeschool-curriculum
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