I just got caught up with posting some new composer lapbooks to the Color In My Piano shop!
As you may recall, I teach a Music History Class for homeschoolers each week. I started creating my own music history curriculum after I was unable to find anything quite like I was looking for. I ended up using the lapbooking format for my curriculum, because it is a visual, interactive way to learn historical facts and information. It has been quite a success so far! I am constantly impressed with how much information my students are able to absorb each week.
I call my curriculum The Great Composers & Their Music. Each $10 pdf download includes all the pages you will need to print for each student to create their own lapbook, as well as a printable biography booklet, and a few pages of extra information for the teacher. The license for this curriculum allows you to print as many pages as you like, as long as you are using the materials with your own students.
The curriculum is a pretty flexible. I teach each composer over three class periods, spending about 20-30 minutes out of the class on the lapbook. (We do other activities during the rest of the class time.) If you wish to use these lapbooks for a one-time class, you can probably cover the whole lesson in 60 minutes (or maybe 45 minutes if your students are junior high or older). A lot of it depends on how much time you devote to listening to excerpts of the composer’s music (a link to a YouTube playlist is provided).
Here is a peek at the 4 newest composers that have been added to the Color In My Piano shop!
Here is a picture of the assembled Debussy lapbook and the accompanying biography booklet. I think my students’ favorite part about studying Debussy was seeing some examples of Impressionist artwork and learning how it relates to Debussy’s music.
Here is a picture of the inside of the Beethoven lapbook. We listened to his most famous compositions so that we would be able to identify them by name upon hearing them, and then we talked about his three periods of compositional style.
The highlight about studying Saint-Saens, was listening to all the movements from Carnival of the Animals! My students loved learning about the musical jokes that are embedded in that work.
Our study of Scott Joplin brought about a discussing of ragtime music and syncopation. We also listened to some of Joplin’s most well-known piano rags and analyzed their forms.