Hymns, Folk Songs, and Poems

For the next 9 weeks, these are what we're planning to do:

Poems from Lord Alfred Tennyson
 I am surprised to find that several of these are familiar already. We won't be doing anything super-fancy with them, just reading and narrating a couple times a week.

For our Hymns and Folk Songs, I've created playlists with nice arrangements, specifically including some that are just ordinary folks, rather than the professionals. I love to listen to the professionals, but generally their music is "photoshopped" quite heavily and one of my goals is to give my kids permission to sound like ordinary mortals when they sing. We're going to work on these for two weeks each, to help us learn the words. Plus, the plan is to listen to the playlist some of the time, which will help us as well. Nothing like a little repetition.






I picked up a used copy of Lives of the Musicians a few weeks back, and Vivaldi is the first in the book, so we're starting out by listening to him. The boys tend to be interested in violin music, so I'm anticipating that this should go pretty well. Plus, Dragon was very interested in the process as I was deciding on titles and building the playlist. I think my favorite is the 8th on the list - who knew that recorders were for serious music?! We played them in about 5th grade, and we sounded awful. But that guy sounds pretty amazing. They should have played some genuine recorder music for us, so we'd know what the potential for one of those things really is. I had no idea.



Anyway, that should be enough to get us going through the first 9 weeks of school. I'm trying some new planning ideas, so that's as far as I'm building my plans right now. I'll re-assess what point we're at when we get toward the end of those 9 weeks, and decide if this system works well for us. In the mean time, these play lists should help us get a good start.