Save time and simplify
your homeschooling life...
Learn from experienced
homeschoolers how to write your own curriculum.
It really is that easy!
Use this website with Beverley Paine's Getting Started with Home Schooling - Practical Considerations to help you develop your own educational curriculum to suit your family situation, beliefs and lifestyle. The checklists can help you identify your children's current educational skill level in each subject area, as well as find any 'gaps' in their learning, plan what they need to cover or keep track of what has been learned. As you can appreciate this website is continuously under development... It's our aim to add pages on a regular basis in all curriculum areas: check back frequently. Feedback and comments welcome. We hope you enjoy the articles and activities and find the links and recommended resources useful. Over the next year we will be working our way through each subject area and writing fresh, new content which will also be reproduced in a reasonably priced handy reference booklet from our Practical Homeschooling Series. |
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Matching Musical Notes
A Musical Sensory Activity
© Beverley Paine, 2005
I first saw and heard this activity when visiting a Montessori Kindergarten about two decades ago. We made up our own version, from memory, when at home, using whatever musical instruments were to hand. The aim of the activity is to prepare the child for music and to improve auditory discrimination of sound, that is, pitch.
The Montessori class used 26 bells and a wooden mallet for striking them, together with a silencer for stopping the sound as well as a chart replicating the black and white keys on a piano. We used a child's xylophone, a piano or recorder, and a piano chart that I had made, with the names of the key notes marked in the appropriate spaces. This was mostly for my own use as I was also beginning to learn to read music!
April would pick a note from the chart which I would play, and then she would experiment by hitting notes on the xlophone until the notes sounded the same - that is, they were the same pitch. This exercise is quite different from the original Montessori one, but the end result is similar, so we didn't mind.
In addition to musical skills, this activity builds maths and language skills, using comparative language such as high, low, higher, lower, highest, lowest; the names of the notes of the scale: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do; or the name of the pitches produced by playing the instruments.
We had a box of percussion and home made musical instruments on the shelf that the children had continuous access to and was usually played with for some time after an activity like the one above.
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
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Thank you for visiting!
Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia,
Beverley and Robin Paine
are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families.
They began homeschooling in 1986 and three years later started the
South Australian Home Based Learners
network. Beverley continues to write for homeschooling newsletters
and magazines as well as hosting several websites dedicated to promoting
and supporting home education in Australia. Her aim is to demystify the
education process and make it accessible to all parents. Enjoy Beverley's
wealth of practical knowledge, homeschooling and unschooling tips and
ideas through articles and books and online at
www.homeschoolaustralia.com.
Since the late 1990s Robin and Beverley have been building their home education
publishing business - Always Learning Books - from home with the help of their son Thomas.
"Education is not a preparation for life. Education is life itself." John Dewey
Please note that the opinions and articles included in the suite of Homeschool Australia websites are not necessarily those of Beverley and Robin Paine, nor do we endorse or necessarily recommend products (other than our own) listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements.
Please visit the following websites for information on homeschooling in Australia:
Homeschool Australia : SAHEN : Australian HS Curriculum : About the Paine Family
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