Dear Friends,

I am a musician myself, classical voice being my first love, though I am also a pianist, a songwriter, and play french horn and a few other instruments.
I am a Catholic homeschool mother, and we have been using the classical model of education for my children's curriculum for the past several years.

I am trying to put together a Vocal program for the classical curriculum I am doing with my children and other families, and in short- I want to do a basic singing foundation with the kids, and base it on beginning chant.

I am also looking at methods, such as the Ward or Kodaly methods to help with the vocal technique training. Though I would love to attend conferences/workshops, currently that's not a feasible option, as several of my children are very young and this is not the 'season' in my life which would allow for me to do that, unfortunately. So, thus I do what I can!! :) I have been a music director at several parishes over the years, (we have moved about 5 times in the past 8 years, thus the 'several' part!) However, I have done nothing in the realm of chant/sacred music, which is all I hunger for now! Now, I am blessed to be able to focus on homeschooling. :)

More details about our program-
I am specifically looking to prepare something for 2 different age levels-
K-3 and 4-6
(We do also have the need for 7-9 and 10-12, as well, though I wanted to start and focus on the younger ones first).

-We are a classical education program that meets once a week for a full day. The parents stay with their children, and they are basically learning alongside them, too. It's more of a 'mentoring program', where the parents then go home with the curriculum framework they've been given and they 'flesh it out' the rest of the week. :) We cover, in the K-6 age group, memory work, oral presentations, readaloud/book discussions and socratic method of discussion, writing/grammar/spelling/poetry/copywork/handwriting, and then we have art, music, or science. I am in charge of developing the music portion. We are currently in the 3rd year of 3 total cycles, and then we start over with Cycle 1 next year. This is the last 'beta year', so we are really hoping to firm things up now, this year, with how we want to do our music program each cycle from here forward. (The past two years they did a hodgepodge of different things; now we have a better vision/idea of where we want to go and what we'd like to accomplish....I just came on board this year, and have been christened the music person! : )

Regarding the music portion of our program each cycle:

-We have 60 minutes to work with, for 9 total weeks. However, the 60 min is probably going to broken down into thirds as such:
-We are probably going to do 20 min every week, for 9 weeks total each yearly cycle, of some sort of vocal technique/training that I think should include Solfege, tonal recognition, breathing techniques, simple notation, vocal exercise, etc. I don't see this changing each cycle, but rather keeping the same program for each yearly cycle, since it would be difficult to teach something new to children who start the program during, say, Cycle 2 or Cycle 3, and haven't started with Cycle 1. But this way, it wouldn't matter when they come into the program, as they'd be getting the same vocal program every year, and it will be great review for all the children anyway. I would love very much to have an extended curriculum to have the parents continue with their children outside of class, reviewing what we've done and building slowly upon it. This would ensure that, in the very least, the children will have daily review of what we've learned in class one week, and they'll come back ready to build upon it the following week. I myself have never taught Solfege; I am a classically trained vocalist/performer, but it's been a long time since working with my coach/teacher, and I've only actually taught a few students since then, but never with Solfege. (I have briefly read about the Ward method and its use of Solfege and specific hand positions that are taught with each tone- I'd love to incorporate that in what we do!)

-The next 20 minutes, we'd like to 'put into practice' what they just learned, in a sense. During the second half of the year, even though we won't have any more formal music portion to the program, the children can sing the different chants they've learned during our Sanctuary time at the beginning of the day, when we all meet together for prayer, saint of the day, and virtue training. This way they will continue having the opportunity to sing together each week. We will probably have different chants spread out over the three cycles, giving some nice variety for the children to learn/sing.

-The final 20 minutes will be more of a Music Appreciation portion, focusing on listening to music and learning more about different composers/time periods/styles/techniques/etc. This portion of the Music program will indeed change each cycle, focusing on different time periods/styles each Cycle. (By the way, this portion hasn't been written yet- any resources you might suggest? Currently I'm looking at "How To Introduce Your Child to Classical Music in 52 lessons" by Leslie and Robert Spencer, but I'd love any other suggestions! The goal is to teach them how to listen to music well, and most importantly to leave them with a great love for music, wanting to go home and learn/listen more!)

So, as you can see, we're attempting to do much in a short time, as a way of 'painting a broad brush stroke of beauty' that then inspires the children and parents to go home and 'paint more'! :) So, we either throw our hands up in the air and say, "It's impossible, because our time is too limited!", OR we take what we have and see it as an opportunity to give them little 'snacks' from the musical buffet of learning, introducing them to various things, and then leave it in the hands of each family to pursue more outside of our time together if they are so led/inspired to do so! Now, we just need to figure out the best way to do so! :) :) :) And, because we are just simple homeschooling families that are coming together to do this, we can't guarantee that every one of our branches will have an expert musician available to take on the music portion of the program, SO that is why we write the program the way we do, making it accessible to 'nonexperts' in the different subjects, so it can indeed be duplicated/taught by any of the mothers who choose to be what we call 'mentors' for each classroom. (After all, as the Church teaches, parents are the primary teachers of their children anyway; so our hope/goal is to empower the parents with tools to successfully do this.) What I mean is that the curriculum is all written and set, and the mentors' role is to present the information in ways that are accessible to the kids so they can then go home and 'flesh it out' more deeply with their parents. The 'easier' we can lay it out for the mentors, the more successfully it will be implemented. Ideally we can put together something for the music program that we can have the mentors become familiar with (perhaps via dvds/ instruction booklets, something of that sort), create a syllabus for each week, plus some sort of extended syllabus for the parents to go home and do for the rest of the week with their children. We hope to give them a deeper love and appreciation for singing and for sacred music, and whet their appetite for more!

Anyway, we are on a bit of a time crunch... we start in September, though we train our 'mentors' (the classroom 'teachers') at the end of July. But there is breathing room, since we don't actually begin the program again until September, and we could technically have a special day of training for our mentors once the music material was completed. The other thing I was thinking about was that, since most of our mentors will probably not be musicians by trade (they're homeschool mothers, basically, with every which kind of skills! :), it might be good to put together not only a curriculum manual/book for the music portion, but also an audio or video aid to know that it was being properly taught to the children in each classroom. Anyway! I'm throwing all my thoughts out there right now to detail what we're hoping for/envisioning. Any help/advice that can be offered would be so appreciated! I'd rather not 'reinvent the wheel' if there's already something(s) out there that would fit our needs.

I apologize for this over-lengthy post! Just trying to be very thorough as to what we're trying/hoping to do!

Blessings to all of you in JMJ,
Michelle