Thursday, November 3, 2011

Composer Study ~ Chopin

a teaching heart


The past few weeks we have been studying Chopin and we've enjoyed listening to his often fast tempo piano pieces.

Books we used:
"Frederic Chopin" written and illustrated by Mike Venezia (part of a series called "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers). Venezia's books are always my children's favorites. Every other page has a funny cartoon that goes along with the reading and the children get a big kick out of the author's humor.


Resources we Used:
Grooveshark - I recently discovered Grooveshark. You can create a free online account and then design a playlist. For instance, I have a playlist for Chopin so we can only listen to his music. Pandora is a nice website, but if you search for Chopin you will only listen to music like Chopin, but it will not necessarily be one of his compositions every time you listen. I pull up our Chopin playlist on Grooveshark while we're at the table doing school work and a few times we even listened to it at dinner. Once I decide on our next composer, I will simply create a new playlist to make listening to the composer easier throughout our 6 week study.
Jimmie's Squidoo Lense - I found some helpful resources over at Jimmie's Squidoo lense all about Chopin. Have you visited Jimmie's blog called "Jimmie's Collage"?

What the children think about Chopin's music: Most of Chopin's pieces are very fast. My son jokingly calls him a show-off. However, my daughter points out that he really wasn't a show-off because we read about how he actually did not like to perform in front of large crowds.

What composers have you enjoyed studying? I'd love to have you share! Maybe you have never done a composer study before. I cannot communicate to you how easy this is. Well, the way I do it is easy. Ha! I go to the library check out a few books, I make a playlist on Grooveshark, and then we write a page or two for our composer notebook. See? That's easy!

I am linking up this week with Study the Composers over at A Teaching Heart.

3 comments:

Blossom Barden (NorthLaurel) said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog (and following ;) and for the suggestion. It looks like the books would be an easy, fun way to learn more about the composers. I like your way of doing composer study ;)
Thanks again :)

Pebblekeeper ~ Angie said...

Thanks for linking up! What a fun study!

Amy said...

I haven't been really focusing on any composer, but we put on a classical channel on our cable while we are doing our school work. Bri can tell a lot of them before we look to see who it is. I have played classical music for her since she was in the womb. So she loves it. Even as a baby, she would turn to look if music came on that she recognized.

You could also check out CD's from the library. I have Best of Bach, etc. I like Baroque style, so we listen to alot of it.

Have a blessed evening.