Classical Music & Art Resources For Kids

It’s Homeschool Friday! I wanted to share some of our favorite art and music resources. Through Classical Conversations, we cover several great artists and composers. Everything listed is something we use on a regular basis or I have found and want to use more. Hope you find resources your family would enjoy too!!

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My kids LOVE music and all things art, so I try to have several resources around for them to look through on their own, as well as us sitting down and reading through them together. Some I have purchased after checking them out at the library and loving them. Others were purchased second-hand and turned out to be favorites or simply great resources to follow along with our Classical Conversations material.

While this list seems like a lot, we are a go with the flow style so having several resources on hand allows for us to grab whichever book is going to best suit the needs for that day or week. It gives us options and variety - which helps me feel less overwhelmed. :) An area I would like to improve on is hymn study. I believe hymns are important and beautiful! We studied one hymn last year and my girl loved it. I plan to do more this year.

Art and sculpture

“Discovering Great Artists”, (affiliate link) will look familiar if you are involved with Classical Conversations. This is the book used in class for art projects. I found it on Amazon used and it was in great condition. It gives a short description about the artist and then an art project for the kids to try using the techniques the artist used at the time.
Included with each artist/project is,

• the artists style
  
• art technique used
• level of difficulty 

I am typically your “less mess is best” kind of mom. I am slowly getting better. We have done a few of the projects and it was a lot of fun every time. This year, I intend to look ahead and know which artists we will cover in Classical Conversations before it starts - so I can plan which projects we can do at home again or something similar.

My oldest loves everything art, from painting and sketching to sculpting and building (cardboard or whatever is on hand). Even if we find a project from another artist, just adding art on a consistent basis is a goal for this year. This is such a great resource for Classical Conversations participants. Even if you are just reading the bio and talking about the style of the art and if they can see that in the art piece, that is making them think about it. And then maybe it comes out in their next free craft/art time. How fun is that?!

“Global Art” (affiliate link) is another great book I found second-hand. It incorporates culture with art. My girl loves to learn in general (you know, typical first born girl stuff) and she enjoyed looking at the various art of countries around the world.

Last year, she used modeling clay to make jewelry and engraved hieroglyphics from the ancient Egyptians. This was part of her costume for her presentation on the geography of Egypt. Because everyone needs to be in full ancient Egyptian attire for a geography presentation. ;)

“Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists: Da Vinci”  (affiliate link) is one of a series - the link is actually for Picasso, but there are several to choose from. They have several artists and composers. I would love to have them all, of course.

They are short and colorful books that are great for an elementary age attention span. And it also includes some of their paintings, which is what my girl always wants to see.

Music

We are not a musically talented family really. I took piano lessons as a child and I have rhythm. But that’s about the extent. We ALL, however enjoy music a great deal. Again, with Classical Conversations, they have a focus on the classical composers and importance of music and the orchestra.

“My First Classical Music Book” (affiliate link) is one I cannot recommend enough!! Find this at your library and then if you love it as much as I do, buy it! All of my kids love it. It comes with a CD and it will tell you on the page which track goes with it. It covers a variety of composers. My kids have to have the book open to the page the music is playing, even if they are playing either legos or play doh, they want it on the correct page. A great introductory book to classical music.

“The Ultimate Guide to Music” (affiliate link) is another book we have used several times. It covers several of the greatest composers, including the period they composed in and a short bio. This book also includes information about instruments and music in general. It’s super colorful and again, one of our favorites - I believe because it is so colorful. We are visual people!

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These books were discovered at a book sale. We have not used them a lot yet, but are in line up with the rest of our music books. They are a bit older, but I found them on Amazon.

• "Musical Instruments" by Meryl Doney (affiliate link) - contains craft projects to make various instruments. I'm really glad I picked up extra molding clay. This is where my "less mess is best" theory will have to subside.
  
• "The Science of Sound" by Rennay Craats - We have used this book the least out of all of the resources listed. I think it's an important concept though, discussing sound in general, not necessarily strictly a music book. This is a Thriftbook link, not an affiliate ;)
  
• "Places in Art" by Anthea Peppin (affiliate link) - I believe this is the book, although it does not show the actual book cover. This is a great resource for the beginning weeks of Classical Conversations, such as perspective.
  

New & Already Loved Resource

"The Arts: A Visual Encyclopedia" (affiliate link) This is a brand new book for us. I looked through it at Barnes and Noble and knew we would love it, but wasn’t able to justify the cost at the time. I did what everyone else does, added it to my Amazon list. ;) I recently looked back at it to share with a friend and the price had dropped. So I grabbed it!!

My girl has already found the ballet section and enjoyed learning where dance came from. This book contains information on all of the arts. It’s a great general, big picture resource - which I love. Resource books are great because you can easily see what you want to find out more about. Sometimes the internet is just too much and overwhelming.

Additional Resources

• My Mundane and Miraculous Life - I recently found this site with several picture books about composers. I will be adding some of these books to our library list soon.
• SQUILT -I have not used this resource before, but I see it everywhere and it looks super interesting, and something potentially for the future.
• Making Music Fun - This site I have used multiple times and other sites reference it often as well, I have noticed. I really like the free coloring sheets of the composers, but has such a variety of material to use.
• Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood - Her site has an enormous amount of information and materials. I have used several items from her site. I am debating whether my second grader could benefit from the notebooking pages, or if it would be too much for her. We do handwriting in several other places. But I liked several of the links she has on this page. If you need book lists or planners or missionary curriculum (on my list to purchase in the near future), she has it all.
• Musical instruments (affiliate link)- Toddler sized instruments, but still real enough they can learn how to use them. Our kids have loved this bag and have parades every chance they get. This link isn't the exact bag we have, but very similar. Ours is two years old and this looks like an updated version.
  
• Classics for Kids podcast - I discovered this podcast a few years ago. They are short and sweet. I really love it, I just forget that I have it with it being electronic. My daughter loves it though and she is getting better at working the podcast app so she will probably start turning it on herself. :)
  

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Our weekly review

• Using Nerf guns to shoot down blocks to make our number bonds was super fun. And it gives him another target instead of his sisters. This is one change I’ve made this week. I ordered the K the Singapore Math book 1a. It may be a little advanced, but we will take it slow. He asked for extra math every single day last week. He is motivated, so something had to change. We’re going with it.
  

• The SnapWords from Child1st Publications (affiliate link) have been great! They worked on sight words together while I did a “real lesson”, as she calls it, with the three year old.

 

• The math SnapWords from Child1st Publications (affiliate link) were also super helpful this week. We used them for the greater than/less than lesson in Singapore 1a.

We are also loving God’s Design Ecosystems. We marked off a habitat in the yard and found twigs, acorns and two slugs. They thought it was the best.

To check out all the resources and links to what we are using this year, go to this post.

Thanks for reading and hope you find these resources helpful to you.  I would love to hear what resources are your favorite. There are so many great sites and books out there, it's hard to choose.

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