Se7en + 1 Musical Appreciation Resources for Kids…. Books, Online and Craftiness…

A lot of folks have asked what tools we use for music appreciation, this week Playing By the Book had a call out for Music books and that was the prompt for me to pop all our musical resources into one post for our readers. While our children learn how to play musical instruments as part of their schooling, there is so much more to the subject “Music” than playing an instrument. While we outsource music lessons, musical appreciation happens at home… the neighbours will vouch for that!!!This post contains a number of books we have enjoyed, but scroll down for some online fun and craftiness as well.

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So here you go: Se7en + 1 Musical Resources we use in our Homeschool…

  1. Our Favourite Classical Music Book: The Story of the Orchestra is our favourite musical appreciation resource… we have read through this book together many, many times. It is beautifully illustrated and is written simply enough for young children to understand, but doesn’t talk down to kids so my older children enjoy it as well. It comes with a CD that you are supposed to play at certain places in the book – we have never managed to co-ordinate that, but we keep the CD separately and listen to it as well.
  2. Reference Books: We have two main reference books that we use to look up facts and information pertaining to music… The Usborne Book and the Dorling Kindersley book, both are beautiful photographic journeys of music through time and around the world… The Usborne Book comes with the usual Usborne quicklinks, which is a fantastic online resource, where you fill in a page number and the link will take you to a relevant website of interest to the reader. You can take a peak into the DK book here… it has themed pages throughout the book filled with amazing facts.
  3. A Great Series: Mike Venezia has written a whole series on Great Composers:
  4. Picture Books:
    • Famous Children Series:
    • Composers:
    • Musical Instruments:
    • Pieces:
  5. For Older Kids:
  6. Music Appreciation Online:
  7. I have written about things that our kids listen to on their iPods before, and list of favourite music finds online has grown since then:


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    • Podcast: Classics for Kids. They have a great website packed with kid friendly information about composers, and instruments. Not to mention a fabulous series of podcasts, featuring different musicians and gendres of music.
    • Websites: Great websites are DSO for Kids; Kids Music Corner, they have great composer fact pages for kids; and Making Music Fun has great printables and resources for classical music for kids.

  8. There is an App for that: My First Classical Music App by Naxos, this is in the style of an interactive book, based on the book by the same name – pages on great composers and lots of information on musical instruments. Fabulous illustrations and lots to click on and look at and learn. the information can be a little quirky, not your typical “he was born in the year…”, which just makes it so much more fun – you never know what interesting tip is lurking under the next click. I love it as much as my kids do – always a help!!! You can read about music and listen to music… a great way to learn about the classics in a fun way that just doesn’t feel like it is “educational.”
  9. And the se7en + 1th:

  10. Creating Musical Instruments: Giving kids an opportunity to try out different instruments is so much fun, so is making instruments… my kids are forever making horns out of tubes and shakers out of bottles… these are some of the musical crafts we have blogged about.

Hope your little maestro’s enjoy some of our resources!!!

6 Replies to “Se7en + 1 Musical Appreciation Resources for Kids…. Books, Online and Craftiness…”

  1. It’s always best to teach kids music while they’re young. They blow past barriers that older learners have trouble with. And the World’s Greatest Composers series by Mike V. are great, fun learning tools.

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