Homeschool

If Mom (or Dad) Teaches Music Lessons

May 20, 2011

I recommend two firm boundaries for parents who teach private music lessons to their own children.  (In my last post, I outlined some of the advantages teaching one’s own children music lessons.) First, fix the lesson time and stick to it.  A specific time obviously helps the music student, but it also helps other family [...]

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Should Mom Give the Music Lessons?

May 16, 2011

Learning to play an instrument is a great way to expose your child to music and its developmental advantages.  Giving your child private music lessons is not the only way, of course.  Curricula that explore the development of cultural movements and ideas, such as Discovering Music, can connect events and solidify an understanding of civilization [...]

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Designing Your Child’s Classical Curriculum with Eliot’s 5-Foot Shelf of Books

May 4, 2011

What’s green, takes up a five-foot bookshelf, and promises to “carry you forward upon this road to the high goal toward which all of us are making our way“? If you shout The Harvard Classics, then you’ve guessed correctly. The 51 green volumes once widely known as the Five-Foot Shelf of Books still offer a [...]

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A Classical Exercise in Research

February 4, 2011

For decades I taught a course a graduate music course called “Intro to Grad Studies.”  The name always bothered me.  It sounds so bland and unsubstantial.  The proper name for this traditional course is “Music Bibliography and Research Methodology.”  That has more “umph,” doesn’t it? We suffered through this course back at The University of [...]

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Classical Music for Boys

January 27, 2011

How do you teach classical music to boys? I was fortunate enough to spend New Year’s Eve at a concert – complete with cascading balloons in the grand finale.  Listening that night, I thought about all the things awaiting discovery by my children, details of the story of the world and the place of music [...]

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Do You Hear What I Hear?

January 18, 2011

Ready or not, here comes the second semester.  And maybe you’ve been thinking about some curriculum adjustments, maybe working more arts, music and Western cultural history into your homeschool curriculum.  Or maybe you’ve avoided thinking about curriculum by . . . watching sports! There are several sports options this time of year: football, basketball, or [...]

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The Place of Arts in the Curriculum

January 4, 2011

Curriculum.  Is there a word that grabs our attention more quickly?  Especially when the choices are so rich and, potentially, overwhelming? Well, what would you expect from a word that means “race course”!  Yes, curriculum comes directly from the Latin verb currere—to run.  Common words such as “current” and “courier” come from the same root. [...]

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Consonance and Dissonance

December 27, 2010

. . . in Life In my last post about incorporating music into your homeschool curriculum, we looked at how music needs some consonance and some dissonance in order to move forward.  Too much consonance, and the music will not move – or will need another musical element, such as rhythm, to do so.  Too [...]

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A No-Frills Approach

July 5, 2010

Which part of Conference Season 2010 is more fun: experiencing the new conventions or returning to the ones we first visited in 2009?  The answer is “both.” It’s rewarding to look up and see the families we first met in 2009 who ordered Discovering Music during the pre-publication phase.  That made you co-pioneers with us! [...]

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On the Road Again

April 17, 2010

Goodness, it’s been an exciting time.  With the end of the concert season and the beginning of the conference season, it’s hard to know which way is up. First, let me greet all of you who are new to the Circle of Scholars, especially the wonderful folks I met at the Catholic Homeschooling Conference in St. [...]

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