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Hello! I am new here and have a question. I am using Beyond with my 6yo dd and am planning for next year. I love the CM method and look forward to doing the artist/composer studies with her. Is there any of this kind of study in HOD, and, if so, which guide introduces it?

Thanks for your help!
Julia

Hi,
I have not used these guides yet, so I don't know how it is done within the guide, but art appreciation is covered in Res. to Ref. and there is a composer study in Rev. to Rev. I'm sure Carrie has done a fantastic job working these things into HOD. I can't wait to see how they are done.

I also enjoy incorporating those things into my hs. I wanted to start a little earlier because children are so open to those things when they are young. My dc love our artist and composer activities. Just a suggestion - keep it light. What has worked really well for me was to get a large desk calendar for the table where we work. This year, I call it, "Together Time." My dc are in different HOD levels, so I wanted to do something that brought us together. I jot down what we will do on each day of the week on my calendar. Because of my schedule of outside activities, I chose to put my schedule together like this.

M - Poetry Monday - I just read some nice poetry for a few minutes.
T - Artist study - We are doing the Impressionists this year and next. Finishing up Monet. Starting Cassatt soon.
W - Composer study - Using fabulous story books with music. Did Bach. Now studying Mozart.
(Carrie scheduled the Mozart story book has independent history in Preparing! It's great!)
Th - Nothing because I work.
F - Nature study

Scheduling this way has really helped me plan what I want to do and implement it on a regular basis. I've been much more consistent this year than others. HOD is such an awesome program that I didn't want my "extras" to cause me to skimp on HOD. I've been able to find a good balance this year.

Sorry to give way more info. than you asked for, but I thought it might help.
Laura

Beyond and Bigger have poetry studies written in, so you wouldn't have to worry about that.

If I were actually organized enough I would add in a composer "study" with Beyond and Bigger that would pretty much simply be playing a different composers music during school each week. I would point out every day who the composer was.

I'm not sure what I'd actually do with art/artists? Probably a Five in a Row method similar to the composer study. Nothing hugely formal. Just pick a style per week and get books with that style art in it and about artists who used that style.

Thank you so much for your helpful replies! These are all useful ideas! Blessings!

Julia,

This is a great question! The ladies have done a wonderful job of helping you already. So, I'll just pop-in to mention that in CTC we do watercolor painting along with the poetry of Robert Frost (doing one watercolor painting a week to correspond with the poem). In RTR we do art appreciation in a CM-picture study way once each week in coordination with the artists we are studying in history. We also do Looking at Pictures, which is a terrific overview of how to look at pictures and some art history along the way too. Each of the guides from Preparing on up also has the kiddos sketching along with their history.

Just in case you're looking for other CM-style skills... I'll also mention the following:

In Rev2Rev we do a composer study and music appreciation study with Amy Pak's Hands-on Composers Activity Pak which includes many audios of music and a full-blown lapbook along with the audio tour through the history of music withThe Story of Classical Music.

In Missions to Modern Marvels, we are doing an emphasis on nature journaling (with nature related classic poetry coordinating with the nature journaling) using Barry Stebbing's newest book Nature Journaling and Sketching.

We also include poetry CM-style in every guide from Beyond through MTMM. Beyond and Bigger include poetry coordinated with the history readings. Preparing includes poetry from Robert Louis Stevenson (with creative writing lessons based on the poem each week). CTC includes poetry from Robert Frost coordinated with watercolor painting. RTR includes the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Rev2Rev includes history-related classic poetry. MTMM will include nature-related poetry of Wordsworth, Wadsworth, and Whitman.

Many of our guides include nature-related focuses using living books. We get the kiddos inspired to be bird-watching, leaf hunting, tree examining, insect and animal classifying, star-gazing, nature loving kiddos! Anyway, I just wanted to assure you that you'll find many of these areas well-covered within our guides.

Here's some links and a few notes on incorporating CM-style fine arts skills too. I'll mention that when I didn't have our HOD guides written yet that incorporated the fine arts, I used the products I'll mention below. We did one area per day each week. This isn't necessary, however for those who are wanting to do something like this I'll mention a few ideas.

Nature Study: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=527

Composer Study/Music Appreciation: Color the Classics or the series of composer books by Zeezok Publishing with CD's

Art Appreciation: Smart About Art series (study one painting per week and read commentary with it) one artist per 12 week term (CM-style) Mary Cassatt is a great one to begin with, as is Renoir.

Poetry: (We also did this once weekly, but you wouldn't need to add it as there is plenty in our guides). We used the Poetry for Young People series and did all of the poems for one poet at a pace of one poem per week. Then, we went on to the next poet. We really enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (hence their inclusion as featured poets in our guides)!

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie,
I can't tell what you were suggesting for Nature Study. It's showing a funny link about editing. Thanks for any info.

Thanks! Is this better?

Blessings,
Carrie

I don't do any actual formal artist or composer study but I can tell you my kids have picked up TONS from listening to Themes to Remember and playing the card decks from Go Fish for Art. They play memory with them. I intented to organize and plan a little more, and I eventually will, maybe TtR has composer bios that my oldest loved reading and they are able to point on the composer and music when they hear it on commercials or what have you. They have been able to recognize a few art pieces as well and name the work and the artist...excitedly....in public...way to make a homeschool mama proud!

We will be doing the composer study in PHFHG this year and I might include the Mozart pieces from Themes to Remember as to involve my younger ones as well. I like to play background music often so this lends itself very well to infomal composer/classical music studies. Also, with the Go Fish for Art cards, I would display the work of one artist for a couple weeks or a month or so, dependent upon how many works of his were included. I'd also find a screen saver that rotated through his works or a wallpaper that was an individual work so every time we opened up the computer, we saw it. It doesn't add any time to our day using these b/c they aren't formally used yet they are really learning from them when I have them out.