Homeschool Music Curriculum

I talked, in a previous post, about the art seminar I took.  This time I’m going to explain how that seminar relates to our homeschool music curriculum.

I was talking to some moms at the seminar about one of my daughters that I think is talented in music but hates practicing and lessons.  She used to listen to music and then go over to the piano and poke out the notes until she was able to play the song.

Now we were to the point where she couldn’t even stand sitting down at the piano.  What had I done wrong?  After listening to the concepts talked about at this art seminar, I started thinking about how they could be applied to homeschool music and my daughter.

I told her that she didn’t need to play the songs on the page anymore, for right now, but that I wanted her to come up with a song on her own.  She started going to the piano without any complaining when I would tell her to work on her song.  Then an amazing thing happened last week.  For two days in a row, she actually went to the piano ON HER OWN and started playing!!  She had her ipod with her this time and started working on playing on the piano what she heard on the ipod.  She would go over, and over, and over….. for more than a 30 minutes trying to get this song right.  After a few days of this she is now able to play the piece and sing at the same time.

It’s so rewarding to be able to hear my daughter playing and enjoying the piano again and all without a homeschool music curriculum.  I wish I would have thought of this earlier.  She has always been the type of child that would prefer creating things, rather than working with something that is already created.  Maybe that’s why she enjoys working in the kitchen so much, it is another form of art.