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Zeezok Music appreciation for the music inept

February 21, 2014 Ticia 17 Comments

Ages and ages ago when I was a teacher I played classical music in my classroom.  It was a CD of Peanuts Beethoven music, I played it all the time in my classroom.  So, I know the importance of music appreciation, and I know how helpful it is in your studies, but I don’t really have a clue how to teach it.

Zeezok music appreciation for non-musical homeschool moms

I’m musically inept.  I can sing along to music, I can recognize songs, but I don’t have a clue how to teach music.

{Disclosure, I received a free copy of Zeezok Music Appreciation, and I was compensated for my time, but all the opinions are my own}

What’s in Zeezok Music Appreciation

Zeezok music box

When I first got the box, I made the kids gather around and look at all the cool stuff in it, because this was a heavy box, look at what all you get:

Zeezok music appreciation homeschool music curriculum

Did you see that mother lode of stuff?  A full chapter book for each composer, 5 CDs of music, a teacher/student manual, AND a lapbook CD-ROM to work through.  Well, I happily sat down to work through everything, and after looking it over I of course decided to start with Beethoven.  Why skip to the middle of the book?  Because Shroeder from Peanuts loves Beethoven, so why not?  Besides I wanted to immediately skip to Handel for Christmas next….. but best-laid plans and such, it didn’t happen, and why is that?

The Zeezok music appreciation lesson plans

There was too much to do and we didn’t get done before Christmas.  Here are the first few weeks of lessons:

Zeezok music tips

Do you see all that?  They’ve got like 8-10 things to complete in a week.  While some may only take 5 minutes, many of these activities take a long time.  We couldn’t get it all done in time, so we took almost 3 months to complete Beethoven.  3 months!  And we didn’t even do it all, because some of it was for older kids.

Side point: to my mind, that’s a sign of a well-designed elementary curriculum, some stuff was easy for my kids and some was too hard.  If they could do everything then the 5th graders were going to be bored.

Zeezok picture books

Our weeks started off reading the chapter over several days, it took that long because we listened to ALL the music that’s integrated. Listen to this great excerpt from the book:

They don’t do justice to the illustrations of the book, since they only show the cover in the video.  I loved the illustrations, they reminded me of some of my favorite horse books as a kid.

Zeezok music Beethoven illustrations

My kids’ favorite part was always when we reached the music, they kept peeking at the book asking if there was more music yet.

Dancing to our Beethoven music

That’s how we listened, dancing as hard as we could.  The kids loved it.  Can you tell from the blurry pictures and big grins?

Zeezok music tip

To help make the lessons easier I ripped the CDs to my phone so I could just start them when they were referred to during the chapters.  For just listening we used the CDs.

Quick Break to show you some music-adjacent materials

I figure I’ll share some artist studies to go with this musician study.

  • Frida Kahlo artist study
  • Chagall artist study
  • Queen Elizabeth portrait study
  • Van Gogh artist study
  • Gustav Klimt artist study

Hands-on music appreciation

One of the things I appreciated most about Zeezok music appreciation was the hands-on components, you know me and my hands-on stuff.

Zeezok music Beethoven lesson

We made porridge, which had rather mixed results in the taste department, but the kids really enjoyed making it and talking all about how Beethoven loved eating it, and our results might have been baked by Beethoven who was known for not paying attention to his food.

Beethoven interactive lapbooks

I loved putting the lapbooks together because we had more opportunities to talk about what we’d already read about and how Beethoven might have felt about different things.  My boys’ favorite part was the Rhine River component because of the boats. (I might have forgotten to take my printer off grayscale, so the gorgeous color notebooks are in black and white for my kids, who didn’t mind one bit coloring it all in)

When we reached the “how music was created portions of the lessons I made youtube playlists for the kids to watch/listen to the songs, and the kids wanted to listen to some over and over again.  I’m sure I’ll be doing this for all the composers, so be sure to follow my youtube channel. Future Ticia 2023 here, the videos I shared are no longer on YouTube, I have dozens of other playlists, but it looks like I’ll be deleting this one.

This part is one of the activities I referred to that was hard for my kids.  They’re intended for 4-6 grade, and they didn’t completely understand the activity, which is as it should be.

Zeezok music appreciation video

That didn’t stop them from asking me to play the video about 10 times as they laughed at some of them.

My final call on Zeezok music?

Zeezok music appreciation for homeschool elementary and middle school classical

I love it, for 2 years, rather than the 1 year they suggest.  It’s just too much for me to complete in 1 year, and that’s a good sign.  It’s a sign of good breadth and depth of material if you can’t complete it all in the time suggested.

I wouldn’t mind if the student workbook/teacher manual was offered in a PDF format, but having it in print made it handy for me to check off what we’d done, so it’s not a make or break for me.

Added in, I just found they’ve got a whole slew of composer books as ebooks.  I might head back and pick up the Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker Ballet ebook.

Where to get Zeezok music appreciation

Zeezok Music appreciation is available from Zeezok Publishing.  You can get the whole thing for $169.99 or if you only want the lapbook or the composer books those are available by themselves (SCORE!). I’d recommend getting the whole thing, it’s a great deal. 

Zeezok music appreciation music curriculm

arts and crafts, homeschool, reviews Homeschool curriculum, music appreciation

Comments

  1. Anna-Marie says

    February 21, 2014 at 7:19 am

    I am starting to hear a lot about this program, off to check it out as it looks good, right now my kids only do piano and get music theory that way I need to expand on it. Great review write up

    Reply
  2. Almost Unschoolers says

    February 21, 2014 at 7:28 am

    I’ve just started looking for a music appreciation course for the kids. My 7th and 8th grade teacher (one teacher, one room, both grades together) had a set of records of the great composors he used to play to test us to see if we could identify the composor. I was going to look for something like that, but I’ll add this one to my list of “look intos” as well.

    Reply
  3. Phyllis at All Things Beautiful says

    February 21, 2014 at 8:04 am

    This looks like a great program.

    Reply
  4. Cassie says

    February 21, 2014 at 12:29 pm

    This looks like a great program. Thanks for the review. I’m going to check it out but I think my son is a little too young for it still. He’s only 4. But I’ll bookmark it for later.

    He’s currently taking a piano-based music class but I’d like to introduce music appreciation as well. Do you know of any music appreciation programs for preschoolers?

    http://www.momteachmetoread.com

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      February 21, 2014 at 3:02 pm

      I’ll think on that for a little bit. This would be a bit much for most preschoolers.

    • Becky B says

      February 22, 2014 at 8:13 am

      Thanks so much! I figured it was my browser. 🙂 I really am interested in this for a fine arts. I like how it is all laid out.

  5. Natalie says

    February 21, 2014 at 6:48 pm

    Zeezok certainly got their money’s worth from your review! It sounds like a great curriculum. We do need to try and include more music into our lives, we mostly listen to it in the car…

    Reply
  6. Becky B says

    February 21, 2014 at 8:16 pm

    This looks great. Thanks for your thorough review. Where is the contest? I am not seeing a link.
    ~ thanks Becky

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      February 21, 2014 at 11:29 pm

      Thanks for letting me know, I apparently copied the code in wrong for the giveaway, so try now, it should be there.

  7. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    February 21, 2014 at 11:13 pm

    This curriculum sounds fantastic! Is there supposed to be a giveaway in your post? I couldn’t see one.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      February 21, 2014 at 11:28 pm

      Sigh, yes and somehow I didn’t get the code in right, but it’s there now!

  8. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    February 21, 2014 at 11:41 pm

    I think music appreciation is very important! Bach is probably my all-time favorite composers, but I also love Beethoven and Vivialdi. And Chopin, especially his nocturnes.

    Reply
  9. Claire says

    February 23, 2014 at 1:41 pm

    Really, really good review with a great title. Musically inept – yes, that about sums me up! I wonder if this is available in the uk?

    Reply
  10. Susan Evans says

    February 24, 2014 at 11:47 pm

    This music program looks great! I don’t usually enter drawings, but I entered this one. My kids need more music appreciation in their education.

    Reply
  11. Tanya Rubezhov says

    February 26, 2014 at 9:52 pm

    I’m planning to start music appreciation lessons with my daughter in the more organized way in the near future.
    These resources would be a great help for us.
    Thank you for the giveaway.

    Reply
  12. Abby L. says

    March 1, 2014 at 7:42 pm

    Wow, this looks like a really great program. Thanks for reviewing it. I saw this on Pinterest and am glad I clicked on it.

    Reply
  13. Julie L. says

    March 13, 2014 at 4:26 pm

    Looks like a great program. Thanks for reviewing this!

    Reply

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Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

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