Music Appreciation at Home with Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum

Music Appreciation at Home

Cultivating a love of music is important, but sometimes seems overwhelming to an already-stretched-thin homeschool mom. My children love music of all kinds, and enjoy working with it softly playing in the background, but I’ve struggled to find a great way to teach music appreciation to them without seeming like I’m piling on one more thing into their already busy days.

The most ideal music appreciation curriculum for our family would be one that is easily integrated into other subjects, is relevant, and easily approachable for several ages at once.

Zeezok Music Appreciation Book 1 Collection is all of that and more. I was thrilled to be offered the opportunity to test it out {I was provided a copy of the curriculum and compensated for my time} with my family over the last few months. My children have really enjoyed it.

 

Music Appreciation at Home with Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum

The Best Way to Teach Music Appreciation

Music appreciation is best taught to kids in a way that helps them relate to the composers, and understand the stories behind the compositions. Zeezok does an amazing job of this.

Let’s face it – with four kids in and out of my pockets all day long, I can’t teach them all different things all the time. I’d go crazy and burn out, and they’d be distracted all the time, trying to see what each other is up to. I like to combine subjects and teach the same thing to everyone whenever I can.

Zeezok Music Appreciation makes that easy. It takes a unit study approach, using wonderfully written biographies to hook kids in. We use these as read-alouds so each of the kids can hear stories of young Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and more.

An integrated approach to learning makes it easy to meet the needs of all your kids at once – even when they are different ages and have very different learning styles.

 

Music Appreciation at Home with Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum

 

Using Music Appreciation to Teach Other Subjects

One of my favorite things about the Zeezok Music Appreciation curriculum is that my kids are engaged and learning about other subjects as well. When they studied Bach, for example, they learned about:

  • Character traits like hospitality, sense of humor/wit, integrity, family-loyalty, industriousness, humility, faith, creativity
  • Geography
  • Cooking – making German rye bread
  • Science – an oxidation experiment, learning about the Voyager Space Program
  • Copywork
  • Writing Composition – writing a descriptive paragraph
  • History – a timeline through Bach’s life

When you buy the Zeezok Music Appreciation curriculum, you get five music CDs, a student activity book {you’ll need one of these per child}, CD-ROM containing printable lapbook components for each of the seven composers studied, and seven biographies. We plan to use it over the course of two years.

 

Music Appreciation at Home with Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum

Things I Love About Zeezok Music Appreciation

There are many things that make this curriculum a great fit for our family. If you’re like us, it might fit you, too.

  • It’s complete – everything is right there with very little pre-prep needed with the exception of the recipes and science experiments.
  • It’s bright and colorful – if you have easily-distracted kids, the full-color student activity book and lapbook printables will appeal.
  • It’s multi-dimensional – with lapbooks for review, quizzes, comprehension questions, hands-on activities, and rich literature, it meets the needs of all of your learners.
  • It’s good – the books are engaging and well-written, and it’s a rock-solid intro to music appreciation.
  • It’s award-winning – it was awarded two 2015 Practical Homeschooling Magazine awards:
    • 1st Place Music Appreciation – Great Musician Series (the biographies the curriculum is based on)
    • 2nd Place Music Appreciation – Music Appreciation for the Elementary Grades
  • It’s accessible – if you’re going to be at any of the following conventions, you can take a look at the student activity book for yourself. I think you’ll fall in love.
    • Homeschooling Works – Farmington Hills, MI  March 21
    • Great Homeschool Conventions – Cincinnati, OH  April 9-11
    • Christian Homeschool Association of PA (CHAP) – Harrisburg, PA May 8-9

 

Music Appreciation at Home with Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum

 

Do you want to buy it now and save – and develop music lovers of your own? Zeezok is offering all readers 10% off anything in the music appreciation section of their online store between now and April 10th if you use the discount code: ihomeschool15.

They’re also giving away a complete curriculum to one lucky reader. Simply enter below:

 

 

 

 

To learn more, you can follow Zeezok Publishing on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Music Appreciation at Home with Zeezok Music Appreciation Curriculum