| If you are currently using a classical or Charlotte Mason approach in your schooling and are looking for a good plan to fit art and music appreciation into your curriculum, look no further. Barbara McCoy has done all the planning and organization for you; all you need to do is gather the resources! Each level of the program consists of a loose-leaf packet of colored paper, which includes an overview, information to get started, lesson plan sheets for 32 weeks, and appendices. Following the classical model, grades 1-4 cover art and music appreciation through ancient, medieval, Renaissance/early modern, and modern history at the grammar level, and grades 5-8 explore the same time periods at the logic stage. Students will study artists, art appreciation, and music appreciation each year of the program. For the art appreciation portion of the program, there are three study options offered, depending on the depth of study you want to undertake. The most basic of these is picture study only, in which students look at the art and then afterwards narrate what they remember about the art to you. If you want to kick things up a notch, you can add books to your picture study (at the grammar level), or add books and coloring books to your study (at the logic level, or for the most intensive level of study at the grammar level). The third option for the logic level involves adding Artistic Pursuits lessons to the previous activities, which adds art instruction to the mix as well. Music appreciation is covered in a similar way in both levels, with both reading and listening assignments. At the grammar stage, art appreciation lessons are expected to be one hour per week, and music appreciation lessons will take 45 minutes per week. In the logic stage, art appreciation should take 1-2 hours per week, and music appreciation should take 45 minutes a week. Because of the relatively small amount of time spent on the arts each week, lesson plans for four weeks are included on one sheet. The lesson plan sheets include assignments for each art appreciation option (with notes) and one assignment for music appreciation. The resources may be pretty familiar to you and will vary depending on the study option you are using. Selected resources include Music Masters CDs, Masterpiece Collection CDs, Dover coloring books, Dover artist post cards, Child-Size Masterpieces, Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists series, Come Look With Me series, How Artists See… series, Artistic Pursuits, and many more individual titles. Because there will be quite a few resources to gather, you will probably want to acquaint yourself with this program and allow yourself some time locate resources prior to your study. If you currently have no trouble integrating art and music into your curriculum, you will probably not need to rely on something like this; however, if you are short on time and imagination, these easy-to-use packets may be just what you need to begin studying art and music appreciation. – Jess

Customer Review

 
Taryn H. from Alpharetta, GA wrote the following on 05/05/2009:
This product is invaluable to a busy homeschooling mom wanting to expose her children to Art and Music. The curriculum is spelled out week by week with several tracks to follow for Art and 1 track for Music. No additional planning is needed. The tracks allow you to decide how intensive of a study you would like to provide. Additionally, the tracks allow you to customize for learning styles (i.e. visual, versus hands-on, etc.) Although the product is listed for Grade 1, it could be used for Pre-K or Kinder, or with multiple ages. A few additional resources are suggested (i.e. books and cd's), most of which could probably be obtained from a well-stocked local library.