Music for 1st grade, classical minded

[StormySar]

What did/are you doing for music for your first grader? I will be getting her into keyboarding lessons because that's currently the only instrument we have, but I wanted to do an introduction to music this year - talking about rhythm, types of instruments, how to read musical notes, types of music, etc. I'm not sure where to go with this, and I don't mind making my own but don't know what is appropriate for first grade.

[tammyw]

When our daughter was that age, we got season passes to the symphony and she loved that (in fact we just moved to a new city and they have a family season pass and for an hour before each show, they have a musical "petting" zoo where you can go and see all the different instruments, touch them, hear them, even play some).

We also LOVE the cd series Classical Kids. The first we tried was Beethoven Lives Upstairs and we were hooked - the entire family. Here is a link to the box set on amazon (there are two box sets). You can also buy them individually!

http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Kids...2750963&sr=8-1

That was also the time when she started weekly piano lessons and that's been going really well.

Oh, and we also got fun books from the library on different composers which helped to bring out more details from the Classical kids cds. And we rented The Magic Flute on dvd, watched some of the ballets on dvd and in person (my daughter also does ballet, and this will be her second year performing in the Nutcracker we think).

I just like "living" it and it really got the whole family loving classical music!

I just found this - wish they were playing in our city!

http://classicalkidslive.com/content...bpage=overview

[pigpokey]

1st grade DD did choir, a half hour group recorder lesson, and violin (mostly in a group of 3 lesson but some one on one). But I did not make her practice except with a tutor.

This year for 2nd she will continue violin and start a more serious choir.

For 1st my son will probably be required to do the same choir as part of his school day.

[Bluegoat]

We are starting the program Music for Young Children. They do piano, singing as a group, rythmn ensemble, and composition. The class is one hour a week with about 15 min of homework every day. A parent attends with the child. It cost about $125 up front to the MYC for the book and so on, and then each class is about $13 for the hour. When the kids finish at age 7 or 8 they are usually ready to write the grade 1 piano exam.

It's available throughout North America. My friend's sister, who has her doctorate in music, started out with MYC and thinks it is an excellent program.

[LemonPie]

We're going to try the Classical Kids too. I just downloaded the Beethoven album from iTunes this evening. They were recommended by a couple of people on another site I visit. It's a few bucks cheaper on iTunes if you don't mind having just a digital copy.

[elus0814]

For my first grader we're reading a book called 'the story of the orchestra', it comes with a cd and goes through different composers in chronological order then all the instruments. I'm planning on taking the first half of the year to get through the book at a pace of a couple pages per week then take the kids to a concert around Christmas time.

For the second half of the year we will be working on learning some violin basics. My four year old took suzuki violin as a three year old before we moved and both he and the almost six year old have their own violins so I will be teaching them some basic things using my adult violin as well as their smaller ones. Just simple things like how to properly hold it and the parts.