Music & Hymns
Every morning we sing; every Friday we listen. This is where I keep the music we're learning — what we're hearing, why we chose it, and what it's quietly doing to us along the way.
Charlotte Mason believed a child should grow up with great music much the way she grows up with great books — not analysed to pieces, simply heard often enough to become a friend. So we don't really study music around here. We live near it. Ten unhurried minutes, the same piece for weeks, until Pan is humming it over her colouring without realising she learned anything at all.
I'll add each composer and work to this page as we go — the pieces themselves, how we listened, and honestly, how it went. Some mornings are goosebumps and a child standing up for the Hallelujah Chorus. Some mornings nobody wants to sit still and we stop after four minutes. Both seem worth writing down.
What we're listening to
- Handel's Messiah — our term with Handel: eight selections, one a week, ears first.
The singing part
Morning Basket opens with singing, every single day:
- Hymn — one hymn held for weeks until it belongs to her
- Folk song — this quarter it's Leron, Leron Sinta, because Filipino children should grow up with Filipino songs in their mouths
- Poem — Longfellow's The Arrow and the Song, recited until it recites itself
First notes on paper
Gently, on the side, we're beginning music basics with simple visuals: the treble staff and where notes live on it, the solfège ladder (do-re-mi, sung up and down), and note values — whole, half, quarter — counted out in 4/4 time by clapping. Nothing formal yet; the goal this year is an ear that notices and a child who sings.