Surprise!

This week we studied Joseph Haydn.

In addition to our reading in A Young Scholar's Guide to the Composers, we read this book by Eric Michael Summerer.  It's definitely a little on the simplistic side for Landon and Kennady, but had good pictures and hit the high points of Haydn's life.

We listened to the Surprise Symphony, and had a really good laugh because Kennady was definitely surprised! She jumped at the first 'surprise' in the piece.  We kept bringing that up all week and chuckling about it.  Our next listening adventure featured selections from The Creation, and once again we got a bit of a surprise from the big burst of sound when light was created.  And finally, we listened to the Farewell Symphony and enjoyed Haydn's creativity and wit in how he used this piece to send a broad hint to his employer that it was time to allow the musicians to return to the city.  (For those of you also using A Young Scholar's Guide to the Composers, I suggest the following link for the Farewell Symphony - the videography and sound is much clearer, so it is easier to see the musicians leaving the stage one by one.)

We did take some time at the beginning of the week to read about percussion in The World of Music.

Kennady has been enjoying the classical music quizzes on the Always Ice Cream website, and one of the excerpts of music played there is Fur Elise by Beethoven.  Kennady says it's her favorite piano piece and she wants to learn to play it.  When she realized that I have it on CD, she found it and has been playing it over and over ever since.

Practices began last week for the kids Christmas play at church.  Landon considers himself too grown-up to be involved, even though two of his friends who are actually a year older than him are in the play.  I think the truth is that Landon just really doesn't care to sing.  At all.  However, Kennady has a solo piece so she has been practicing that diligently.

This post is linked at ~a teaching heart~ where we are keeping each other accountable for making time for music in our homeschooling!

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