Monday, April 29, 2013

Home School in the Woods {Schoolhouse Review Crew}

Are you looking for a hands-on resource for music appreciation? You must check out the Hands-On History Activity-Pak: Composers, from Home School in the Woods. Home School in the Woods offers materials for hands-on history, such as timelines, maps, Lap Books, and history studies.

We've been working on the Composers Activity-Pak the past few weeks, and I'm delighted with how much information is covered, and how much fun it's been to put it all together. It is suggested for grades 3-8, which includes both my boys.

Composers Lap Book, and Orchestra folder
The first thing we put together was the orchestra folder. Inside you'll see numbered pockets, in which you slide little cards of the various instruments. There are small cards from three different periods of music, and list which instruments went where in the orchestra.

I like the way this interacts. Even Little Bit can work with this, even though he still isn't a fluent reader. He likes matching things (even words!).

Then we put together the composers lap book, even though we haven't filled in all the details for each composer yet. Forty-two composers are covered, from the Middle Ages to modern day.


We also learned some music vocabulary, like pitch, sonata, concerto, measure, etc.

 Pieces with a purpose include things like a hymn book, program from an Opera, a CD player, and more.
Periods of music are discussed: Middle Ages, The Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, and Modern.
 There is a timeline, which can be color-coded for each period of music, with figures of each composer studied to place on that timeline.

Included are audio files of 29 movements. While listening, we filled out notebooking pages, and were supposed to illustrate what we "saw" in our imaginations. (The boys had a difficult time with this. We'll be practicing more, though!)
We're putting these sheets in to folder notebooks when we are finished. Essentially, we will end up with a total of 4 folders when we are completely finished, since we did only one Composers Lap Book, and one Orchestra folder; but the boys are each doing a notebook with the notebooking pages.

The Composer Cards are really nice, and handy to look at. They have a sketch of the composer on one side, and statistics on the reverse side. Or you can print the pictures separately from the statistics, and create a matching game.

We checked out several books (noted on a resource list) from the library. I even purchased a couple books, since I really want the boys to delve even deeper in to the composers, and music appreciation in general.
Also suggested were several videos. We were able to get a few of them through Netflix, and enjoyed watching them.

The boys will enjoy looking through the Lap Book, and manipulating the orchestra, for years to come, I am sure. And since we've barely begun on studying the composers, we will be filling in those statistics in the little composer folders over the next several months (maybe even a couple years), as well.
Little Bit showing the Lap Book to big sister
There are many other products to check out, as well. Botanist Boy is so enthusiastic about this Lap Book, even he has his eyes on some of the other projects! Then again, he is my history buff!

Cost: Download version, $18.95; CD version, $19.95.

Contact Information:
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Address:
Home School in the Woods
3997 Roosevelt Highway
Holley, NY 14470
Phone: 585-964-8188
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Be sure to check out what the rest of the Crew thought, since there were two other products reviewed as well!
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3 comments:

  1. I've not seen this resource. Looks like fun! You all did a great job on the lapbook! Love it!

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  2. Wow, that looks like a great music study resource.

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  3. This lap book is a great resource for music study. My kids will be enjoying theirs for a long time.

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