3: Tips for What to do When Your Child Isn't Interested in Learning Music in Your Homeschool

Welcome to the Music in Our Homeschool Podcast, your go-to resource for making music education enjoyable and accessible for homeschool families! I'm Gena Mayo, your host, a homeschooling mom of eight, and a passionate music teacher with over three decades of experience. In today's episode, we'll explore practical strategies for sparking your child's interest in music education when they're not initially enthusiastic. Find all links and resources mentioned in the episode here: https://MusicinOurHomeschool.com/MusicTeachingTips

As homeschoolers, we understand the importance of a well-rounded education, and music plays a vital role in fostering creativity, critical thinking, and emotional expression. But what do you do when your child shows little interest in learning about music? Fear not! I'll share five fun and effective tips to ignite their curiosity and enthusiasm for music education.

Discover how incorporating engaging resources like my online course Learn Classical Music with Cartoons and interactive courses such as Recorder Time with Mr. Jerry or Guitar Time with Ben can make learning music a delightful and interactive experience for your child. (Link are here: https://MusicinOurHomeschool.com/MusicTeachingTips)

Explore the power of repeated exposure to music and the value of exploring genres and styles that resonate with your child's interests, whether it's video game music, movie scores, or Disney songs. Plus, learn how integrating music with picture books can bring musical stories to life and captivate your child's imagination.

Don't miss out on future episodes! Subscribe to the Music in Our Homeschool Podcast and unlock a world of musical possibilities for your homeschool journey. Find the website at https://MusicinOurHomeschool.com and the online course site at https://Learn.MusicinOurHomeschool.com. Thanks for tuning in, and happy homeschooling! 🎵📚

Please follow/subscribe to the podcast and leave a 5-star review and comment if you liked this episode! Find all courses at https://Learn.MusicinOurHomeschool.com and free music lessons here: https://MusicinOurHomeschool.com/FreeMusicLessons

Transcript

Podcast E3: What to do When Your Child Isn't Interested in Learning Music in Your Homeschool

[00:00:00] I was recently asked this question. My kids really aren't interested. in learning much about music. Is there any way I could pique their interest? Well, that's what I'd love to talk about today. 

If you are a homeschooler looking for ways to easily and affordably include a quality music education in your homeschool, you've come to the right place. This is the Music in Our Homeschool podcast. I'm Gena Mayo, homeschooling mom of eight and music teacher for over 30 years.

How can you pique the interest of your children who really are not interested in studying music or learning anything with music education that you'd like to share with them?

So let's talk about a few fun ideas. First of all, I have a course called Classical Music with Cartoons and it's great because it uses cartoons. Some kids really love just watching the video while they're listening to the music. It's one of those things where they're not actually realizing that they're [00:01:00] learning that they're listening to classical music because they're seeing the fun cartoon.

Line Rider is a really fun one because it has this little character that's going through the music and it, it goes. It's changing with the music. And so if the music goes up, the little guy rides up the thing, or if it's sliding down, he goes down. So that's a really great one. There's some others that have some pianists playing music and the computer makes

different designs on the screen. So there's some modern ones like that, but there's also some old ones like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. So really fun classical cartoons that you're hearing the classical music. So another idea is to do something more active. Some kids just don't like to sit there and study something.

They want to actually do it. So I have a couple of courses where it's [00:02:00] practical. Recorder Time with Mr. Jerry and he is a great teacher. He taught for many years in the public school system, elementary music. And so he's taught lots and lots of kids recorder. He knows how to teach it well.

And that is great course to try. I did it with my own two youngest kids, I had never learned to play the recorder myself. And that was super fun to learn it along with them. But it's a course that if your child is a little bit older, maybe fifth or sixth grade, they could even do it on their own with Mr.

Jerry's course. My son, Ben recorded a course called Guitar Time with Ben, which is also great. That's for ages 10 and up. So if your kids are interested in learning guitar. That would be a wonderful place to start. He teaches them the parts of the guitar, and how to tune it, and what different chords are, what the, strings are called, and then you learn to play a few songs with the chords and strumming [00:03:00] patterns.

So, very fun to actually do something physical and interactive in the music learning. Another tip is that sometimes it just takes repeated hearings to start to appreciate something. There have been many times the first time I've heard the music, I was like, I didn't really like that very much. For example, Tangled, the movie? First time I saw it, it didn't do much for me, but the more that I saw it after that first

 viewing, I started to love the music and really see the intricacies of it and understand the story better. And that happens a lot with different types of music. So sometimes it would be a good idea to just take a few, repeated hearings. It would be a good idea to take one particular composer and listen to a lot of that composer's music for a while.

That's what Charlotte Mason recommended. Or even just one piece like maybe a longer [00:04:00] piece, maybe Dvorak New World Symphony, something like that, and listen to it every day for a week. Maybe while you're cleaning or eating lunch or driving in the car. And the more you hear it, the more familiar you get with it, the more you'll enjoy it.

Probably. Maybe not always, but probably. Okay, another idea is to find music that they're already interested in, in another way. Maybe it's video game music or movie music. Maybe there's a particular TV show they like and you could pull out some music from there, or Disney songs. So you can actually just use that type of music as a jumping off point to show them, Hey, studying music can be fun.

And I have lots of courses inside my membership and different places. You could just send me an email if you're curious and you have a question. [00:05:00] Gena@MusicinOurHomeschool.Com and that's Gena with an E. But you can use just more familiar music to start with. And then my last tip is to study music with picture books.

This has been a super fun idea that I learned about when I was teaching elementary music in the public schools. And I had never thought about using picture books to actually teach music, but it's a really fun way to do it because it's a living book Another Charlotte Mason idea, a living book, and it brings the stories to life.

You could find picture books that are talking about a particular piece of music like the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky or Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev, Vivaldi's Four Seasons. So you're reading the story and listening to the music at the same time or maybe listening to the music later, but that really brings the music to life.

So those are my five tips for helping you [00:06:00] enjoy, helping your kids to enjoy learning music. Let me recap those again. To try doing it with cartoons. Trying doing something more active like learning to play an instrument, recorder, or a guitar for instance. Just taking repeated hearings so that you really get to understand the music, maybe even expect what's going to happen next.

Try movie or video game music. And the last one is to do some music with picture books. I will be back next time with some other fun tips for including music education in your homeschool.