Our Journey Westward » Composer Study

Duke Ellington Resources

Cindy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:12:50 +0000

We enjoyed Duke Ellington a lot! It was refreshing to hear a different style of music than we’ve been listening to so far this semester. We aren’t studying a composer in December. I’ll have resources in the sidebar again in January!

Duke Ellington

Making Music Fun – Biography and You Tube Performances

PBS Kids Biography

Books We’ll Read

CD’s We’ll Listen To

George Gershwin Composer Study

Cindy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:48:14 +0000

I hope these resources come in handy as you plan a study of George Gershwin!

George Gershwin

Classics for Kids

Books We’ll Read

CD’s We’ll Listen To

Vivaldi Resources

Cindy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:17:40 +0000

Vivaldi’s music and story have made for wonderful studies this month! We’re off to a more contemporary composer, George Gershwin, for the month of October.

Antonio Vivaldi

Classics for Kids

Book We Read

CD’s We Listened To

Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!

Ending our Month Spent with Wildflowers

Cindy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:38:48 +0000

I admit that wildflowers are quite possibly my favorite of all nature studies. I’m always in awe of God’s creativeness, beauty and majesty through such delicate little things like wildflowers. I’m also amazed at how each season presents me with new flowers that I’ve never noticed before – each with awesome characteristics that are different from any other flower.

A field of wildflowers can move me, while a single wildflower observed closely makes me marvel at the constant, yet diverse design that makes a flower a flower. And to think that wildflowers are “planted by God” reminds me that He cares about me enough to bring me flowers!

I have posted at Shining Dawn Books about this week’s identification walk. I hope you’ll take a minute to hop over there and read An Abundance of Wildflowers as it’s somewhat of a continuation of this post.

Last week, we took a very up-close and personal look at wildflowers through comparisons and dissection. There was no long nature walk involved – only long enough to collect several flower samples to bring back inside. Since the yard wasn’t off limits for picking, the kiddos brought in a couple of flowers that aren’t considered wild. No matter, it made for a great opportunity to discuss the difference between the two!

The first activity was to compare two completely different flowers for similarities and differences. This is another of the notebooking pages that comes with the Wonderful Wildflowers NaturExplorers unit.

The second activity was flower dissection to identify all the parts of a flower.

We own a very old dissection kit that made the dissection not only easy, but exciting for the kids.

We were able to see the ovules (eggs) in the ovary on this hollyhock (not a wildflower).

Eli always gets in on the action!

The third activity was drawing the cross-section of a flower and labeling all the parts.

And the final activity was to complete a watercolor still-life of wildflowers. We have been studying Cezanne, who painted several still-life works, so this tied art and nature study together quite well. And to get composer study in the mix, we listened to a CD of Chopin (our composer of the month.)

“Wildflowers in the Rain”

Composer Study – Frederic Chopin

Cindy — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:41:28 +0000

Here’s Chopin’s sidebar info. You’ll probably see this in the sidebar next school year, too!
Frederic Chopin

Classics for Kids

Listen

Book We’ll Read

Mozart Resources

Cindy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:32:17 +0000

We’ve just finished learning about and listening to Mozart (one of my favorites.) Next month is Chopin. You’ll find his resources in the sidebar soon.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Classics For Kids Radio Shows

Click and Play Biography

Kid’s Bio and Music

Listen to Mozart

Books We Read

Composer Richard Wagner

Cindy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:25:45 +0000

Wagner was February’s composer. I’m making room in the sidebar for next month’s composer, Mozart.

Did you know Renoir painted a portrait of Wagner?

Classics For Kids Biography

Listen

Johann Sebastian Bach

Cindy — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:03:32 +0000

To make room for a new composer study in the sidebar, I’m transferring Bach resources into this post for future reference.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Classics For Kids

Listen to Bach

December Artist and Composer Studies

Cindy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:22:10 +0000

Thanks to the ladies at the CM Artist Study group, I’ve found a wonderful site for various nativity scenes that we’ll use for art study this month.

Each week, we’ll observe ALL of the paintings noticing different things each time like:

realism

colors

feelings

which ones capture the reverence best, or the joy best, etc

the number of people

who is consistently in each painting and why

what style pleases them most

what style pleases them least

Since we’re working on a daily scrapbook page to go along with the Names of Jesus unit and we’re frequently crafting this month, I doubt we’ll do any additional art besides the picture study.

Our composer of the month is – who else – George Frederick Handel. And we’ll be listening to – what else -the “Messiah”.

The biography will come mostly from Classics for Kids, and I may choose an activity or two from Cindy Downes free unit.

As for the “Messiah”, here is a nice explanation of the musical story. We own the “Messiah” on CD, but you can listen to parts of it online here.

Homer and Hayden

Cindy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:47:52 +0000

We continued studying Winslow Homer this week during art. Using this Winslow Homer online lesson, we took special note of the water prints. The kids tried their hand at creating a water landscape and practicing perspective with an up close boat and far away island.

Continuing our study of Hayden, we used parts of this Classics For Kids lesson plan. The rhythm section was particularly helpful for my 3rd grader who is just beginning to start piano and music theory lessons.

And finally, to round out our Fine Arts Tuesday, nature study focused on clouds. We had a snow system that was moving out and new clouds moving in. Observing the various types of clouds in the sky was fascinating. We used this cloud website and this wind speed chart to help fill out Cloud Detective pages from Considering God’s Creation. The kids took a few minutes to sketch some of the clouds we observed on the back of the notebooking page, too.

What are you doing for nature study now that the weather is getting cold??