My family had the privilege of trying the Zeezok Publishing LLC Music Appreciation Book 1: for the Elementary Grades Collection for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.
Zeezok Publishing LLC is a Christian provider of enriching educational materials for homeschoolers. They strive to supply the best and most affordable homeschooling textbooks and supplementary materials that will compliment your educational needs. Zeezok Publishing LLC is continuing to expand its curriculum, books, and supplementary materials to help the homeschooling family have the opportunity to give the finest possible education to their children.
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| Zeezok Publishing LLC Music Appreciation Book 1: for the Elementary Grades Collection |
Music Appreciation Book 1: for the Elementary Grades is more than just teaching music theory or music appreciation to your student. This collection is from the Great Musicians Series. The collection includes a student activity book, music discs, lapbook CD and seven composer biographies. This is geared for grades kindergarten through sixth and a variety of learners including: auditory, kinesthetic, visual, etc. It also meets all national standards for music appreciation.
What is included in detail:
- Student Activity Book: This soft cover book by Elisabeth Tanner and Judy Wilcox starts off with a Table of Contents, Introduction, Scope & Sequence, and Music Disc Track List. Then it has each of the seven composers listed, each with 4 weeks of hands-on activities that include: geography lessons, history lessons, recipes, instrument studies, music vocabulary, hand writing, musical facts of the Classical period, timelines, character trait studies, and so much more. The activity book ends in Endnotes, a bibliography for each section. This is a great companion to the biographies and they suggest getting one of these for each student being taught. MSRP $49.99
- 5 Music Discs: The music on these CDs are in sequence of artist and are listed in the Student Activity Book under Music Disc Track List.
- Lapbook CD: This CD first goes into lapbook construction and common book folds to teach you the basic assembly of a lapbook. Then it shows you pictures of each completed lapbook and has all the lapbook pages for each composer of this collection. Last it has a resource list for each lapbook. MSRP $29.99
- 7 Composer Biographies: Seven different biography books of each composer studied, dating from 1685 to 1828. Included is: Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini and Schubert. These individual biographies describe the childhood and adult life of each of these composers. These are true and accurate with every important event mentioned. These also have written music and lovely pictures throughout.
How We Used This and Our Thoughts:
Teela, my daughter in 2nd grade, and I focused on Paganini for the 4 week study and this review. First we looked through the Student Activity Book and found that besides a nice table of contents, each composer had its own colored tab along the side to find the pages easily. The tab colors also go with the reader colors. When we flipped to Paganini on page 255 we found the Weekly Lesson Outline layout for each of the four weeks. These Weekly Lesson Outlines are given for each composer too and is very well structured and spelled out for you so you know exactly what to do and when. At the end of the 4 weeks they also include an answer key to help the teacher with grading.
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| Paganini Weekly Lesson Outline and an illustration in the reader. |
Some of these activities are covered all 4 weeks and others are not. Some of these are marked LB & you can find these on the Lapbook CD. If they are starred in the book these activities are required in order to meet national music appreciation standards. Here is how the basic outline goes:
- Chapter Reading (book icon)
- Answer Comprehension Question(s) (checklist icon)
- Character Qualities (heart icon)
- Tidbits of Interest (book stack icon)
- Assemble Lapbook Folder (Week One Only) (folder icon)
- Listen to Music Disc, Tracks (headphones icon)
- Hands-On activities (hand icon)
- Geography Map activities (globe icon)
- Quoteworthy (conversation bubble icon)
- Music activities (musical notes icon)
- Writing activities (paper and pencil icon)
- Science activities (test tube icon)
We were so happy to get the whole collection because without one of the components it would be very difficult to receive the full benefit of the program. All of the parts of this curriculum complement each other really well. We loved how easy it was to follow along each week in the Student Activity Book. It was really fascinating to learn about Paganini's life in the Paganini: Master of Strings biography reader and the music discs have music to listen to for each composer. Teela loved making the lapbook with the help of the Lapbook CD and eating the Spaghetti Soup (a recipe in the Student Activity Book) the most (although we might have done something wrong because the noodles sopped up all the broth and liquid and it wasn't much of a soup...but it was still very delicious). As you can see there are a lot of different activities.
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| Paganini Lapbook |
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| Spaghetti Soup (didn't turn out soupy for us, but was delish) |
As a violinist myself, I love Paganini's music. I actually have a wind up violin music player that I bought at the BYU Bookstore years ago which plays Paganini's 18th Variation (Rhapsody on a Theme). I would love to go back in time just to see him perform while he was such a young age.
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| Paganini Violin Music Player |
We did notice that the Shubert biography book was different in format than all the rest. The only things that we noticed that were different were the cover illustrations, it is hardback instead of paperback, and it lists music track numbers in the front that are out of date. We have been told that Shubert is the last book to be updated and will be once they sell out of the current print run.
Teela is excited to learn about the other composers in this collection as well. We are going to start Mozart: The Wonder Boy soon. This is a great summer music program too!
We highly recommend the Zeezok Publishing LLC Music Appreciation Book 1: for the Elementary Grades Collection! If you are looking into a great classical music appreciation curriculum or homeschool music program look no further. Also, look for the Zeezok Publishing LLC Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades Collection expected to come out in Spring of 2017. Book 2 will include: Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Foster, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and MacDowell. I will be looking forward to this as well because I have middle schoolers that would love learning about these composers.
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