I was recently given the opportunity to review A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers by Bright Minds Press. It was a very timely review item for us as I'd been slacking in this area.
About A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers
A Young Scholar's Guide is a 32 week study of 26 famous composers and 6 musical eras. It includes map work, time line work, note taking pages, listening suggestions, games, quizzes and so much more. It is full of interesting ideas and very easy to implement.
It has a suggested 4-day schedule that pretty much does the work for you. All I have to do is choose a composer and print out a few work sheets and we're ready to go.
Our Experience
We have really been enjoying the lessons and have been learning a lot of fun facts about these men.The bios for the composer are informative, interesting, and just the right length. I love how the author's have included their faith and God's role in their lives as part of the readings. Mackenzie was particularly thrilled that this information was included. She loves hearing about how God works in the lives of others, especially famous people.
Each week we get to map the birth place of the composer, create a composer card filled with the highlights of their lives, color a beautifully down coloring page, and fill out the timeline. The timeline is one of my favorite parts of the study. It's really well done and not only includes the obvious date information, but they have us adding in people who were influenced by the musician and their friendships. It's really been neat to see how everyone is interconnected.
It includes several listening suggestions for each composer and includes links to videos on youtube where you can listen and watch. We've been getting the music of iTunes so we can listen to all day long. We've enjoyed all of the selections and have found some new favorites.
Final Thoughts
We are truly LOVING this resource. We have kept up with it consistently since receiving the book because it's so easy to use. It is now a permanent part of our homeschool. We decided to put all of our completed pages in a composer study notebook and it's been really nice to have that to look back on and refresh our memories.
I'm hoping they'll put out another volume with some more composers. ;o)
F.Y.I.
Available at Timberdoodle
Published by Bright Ideas Press
Grades: 4-8
Price: $31.50
I was blessed with a copy of this book as part of Timberdoodles Blogger Review Team. All opinions are my own.
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