Music Curriculum: Week One

A week or so ago, I shared my general plans for music this semester, but I thought I’d try to share what actually happens from week to week with pictures. Remember, you’ll find the printables (or links to the games and activities) in the pdf at this post: Free Beginner’s Music Curriculum: Learning Notes, Rhythm, Music Notation and More!

Last week was our first official week of school, so we only spent a short amount of time on music. (You know how it is when you’re getting back into the swing of things!)

Why are we starting at the beginning with music when the kids all play bits and pieces of music? (They all have dabbled in the piano and other instruments, DD is taking flute lessons for the first time this year).  Well, I noticed that t he kids really can’t read music and I wanted to make sure we weren’t leaving any big holes. For that reason we started back at the very beginning with music and music theory. I’m having LD sit in with us, but he actually goes over more materials than the girls do since he seems to have a better grasp on the material.

During this first week, I made sure the kids knew Middle C, D and B. I explained the difference between treble clef and base clef.  The kids located the notes on the piano (and pretended to play the notes on the piano with their right or left hands). They filled in the worksheet for Week 1 (seen below left and right). You’ll find that on page 3 of the Music Curriculum pdf.  I was amazed at all their questions… They asked what the “squiggly thing” was (quarter rest)… and things like that. I’m so glad we’ve started right back at the beginning since I assumed they would already know things like that!

By the way, there is a space in the middle of those pages for the kids to take notes.  I was going to have the kids draw pictures of a quarter note, half note, dotted-half note, whole note and the rests, but we didn’t get to that last week. You might want to have your kids draw those in that space, though.  Just mentioning that since you might not be able to read my mind to know what I was going to use that space for on the worksheet! 🙂

We pulled out the “Fly Swatter” music flashcards and I got wooden spoons for the kids.  They had a blast WACKING AWAY at those flies as I called out Middle C, all the treble clef notes, D, both B’s, all the Cs, etc!  Even LD joined in for a bit just because it was action packed and fun!We spent some time going over basic rhythms.  I actually can’t remember if the link was mentioned in the Music Curriculum pdf, so I’ll put in the link to the rhythm cards we’re using below:

• Rhythm Cards She has five sets, but we started with set one which includes Quarter Notes, Quarter Rests, and 8th Notes. Set 2 contains quarter, half, dotted half and whole notes, and quarter, half, and whole rests. Set 3 has eighth, quarter, half, and dotted half notes, as well as quarter and half rests.   Set has 16 notes, as well as various 16th, 8th, and dotted 8th note combinations. Set 5 has dotted quarter/8th note combinations.

We clapped out and spoke the rhythms with the rhythm cards from Layton Music:

Our last activity was to use the dime on the staff page. First they practiced just with a coin.  Then they used coins and a toothpick to practice how to make a quarter note (whether the stem goes up or down and which side the stem extends from).

Since last week was our first week back, we only got to music twice, but we’ll still go on to the second week of our curriculum this week.

Our Music Curriculum Plans

Remember, you’ll find the general plans for the semester at the first post in this series.  We are using a lot of free resources and I have put our Music Curriculum plans together into a 8-week plan (it might take us longer). That is a free download and has links to most of the materials you see above.  The packet is 15 pages or so AND it has hyperlinks to many *amazing* free music resources.    Free Beginner’s Music Curriculum: Learning Notes, Rhythm, Music Notation and more 
That’s about it for today! See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! ~Liesl