Exposing Homeschooled Children to Classical Music

Since we spend so much time driving around, many homeschool families use the car to squeeze in learning.   Sometimes Bee reads in the car, and we also listen to Spanish music in the car.  I've also been using to to expose my children to classical music. 

I grew up playing the cello, and music was a big part of my life.  I know a fair bit about music history and kept thinking and worrying about how I was going to make it a part of my children's lives too.  They don't have to love classical music, but I'd like them to be literate in classical music.  By the time they "graduate" from home school, I'd like them to be familiar with the different periods in Western music and the major composers and pieces. 

I kept thinking about how I might do it.  Should we devote a month to each musical period?  Do a unit on one composer at a time?  Wouldn't it be interesting to incorporate art as we study the different periods of music, since they tend to parallel each other?  I have a pretty good collection of classical CD's, and I thought I might make a playlist.  But how would I decide what to include? 

All of this thinking resulted in my doing nothing.  Finally, I decided just to buy a greatest hits album on the Internet and put it on my mp3 player.  Then, we would just listen to it in the car once or twice a week.  Maybe we would talk about it, maybe not, but they children would be getting familiarity with many of the most famous works of Western literature. 

After a little bit of searching, I settled on The Fifty Greatest Pieces of Classical Music by the London Philharmonic.  I will probably add some pieces to my playlist and remove some. For instance, Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons is so overused in our culture that I can hardly bear to listen to it.  I'd like to add a piano concerto by Rachmanninov, Dvorak's cello concerto, amongst other things.  

The great thing is that it's a good start, and the boys are really interested in it.  I don't tell them anything unless they ask.  Bee likes March of the Valkyries, a piece he had already heard.  They both really liked Holst's Jupiter and want me to put the other planets on my mp3 player.  Bug got very angry when Jupiter ended, and a nocturne by Chopin started.  They definitely are paying attention to the different sounds and melodies they are hearing. 

I do want to sign them each up for private music lessons, and I think I will start that for Bug this coming fall.   I think it's great to know how to read music and to understand how music works, and the best way to do that is to sing or play an instrument.  At the same time, I don't want it to be a high pressure situation. 

I think that this coming school year, we will get tickets to children's concerts put on by the local symphony.  It really is fun to have 2 children that are old enough to do such things.