When music touches your soul, hey B? My daughter has expressed an interest in music (once again!) and although we have a section devoted to the ARTS here @ HSN-Quebec, I wanted to explore the internet for any new music resources available! I found a really interesting website that offers ***Music Learning Modules! It's a flash-based e-learning tool to teach basic music concepts. You can play and control audio files, as well as use animations to illustrate concepts such as beat, syncopation, texture, etc. (***Sorry, but the website isn't working?!? Will try to find new link!)

If you are looking for a subscription based 'online' program, a really interesting site to check out would be Tritone Online Music Education. I think the prices are really reasonable, for a year's subscription, it's just $79.95! And there's a try before you buy...a  FREE 'trial' subscription for 10 days!

Have you heard of Mixcraft? It's FREE to try! Check out this review I found @ CLRN...

'Mixcraft turns computers into easy-to-use recording studios. It includes loop, music bed, and a sound effects library to enable users to produce podcasts. The program includes multitrack recording features, plug-in effects, and automatic remixing tools. The Virtual Instrument support and professional instrument collection can be combined with a USB music keyboard to turn computers into music production facilities. The goal of the accompanying lesson plans is to engage the students through interactive lessons to express and promote their creativity, while learning through technology'

Looking for a FREE Music Appreciation Course? "Sound Reasoning” is a web-based, introductory music appreciation course! Check out 'Sound Reasoning' by Anthony Brandt. If you are looking for various types of music like Indonesian Orchestra  or would like to teach your children to listen, use this free download, Alice in Wonderland: Audio Exercises, or Indigenous folk songs depicting our countries history! Here's a great library of resources for folklore and musical instruments!

Ohh...another really interesting site for music and science is Helioseismology! The sounds of the sun or 'Solar Music' can be heard, that go along, with these FREE lessons available for download!

Have you ever had trouble with some of the Art vocabulary that you're supposed to be teaching your child? <grin>

Well, I have! Art Major, I am not! If so, then this is the site for you, it's ArtLex: Visual Art Dictionary! If you are puzzled about what any particular art term or phrase actually means. It contains definitions of more than 3,600 terms (accessed through an alphabetical index) as well as numerous illustrations, interesting quotations from the art world and links to 100 other art sites on the net. This is one for teachers who are really into the arts or for anyone doing research in this area…a real 'Arts' academics site.

Despite our best efforts, from time to time, we will find a shy child within our midst! It's only these children that the outside world will draw attention to when pointing out that homeschoolers don't get enough socialization! So...my FREE lessons link this morning is Child Drama! Children really love to 'act out', especially, when they get to dress a part! And you're encouraging literacy! A win, win link to lesssons!

If you are looking for a great children's play to produce, or for some really effective lesson plans for your Drama classroom, you'll love this place! The author of Child Drama has included a bibliography of helpful books, definitions of terms with discussion, proven monologues for young performers, a list of great links, and tons of other helpful stuff. There are dozens of photos from productions he's directed and designed, most of them with and/or for young people.

Child Drama

This was a comment that I found on Homeschool Nations-Quebec, Canada blog, January 25th, 2008, by Leah Jacobs, the developer of Art Shift Studios...

 Posted by Leah ...

I am a mature woman, working with the EMSB, with special needs children. I am also an art expert, dancer, and play therapist. I am looking for work with children for early intervention or focused learning etc in the Montreal area. I speak English, not from Montreal. My web site is www.artshift.net where I can be contacted. I am looking to develop quality learning experiences for young people. L.Jacob

Ever curious, I decided to check out thelink she provided and found it to be very interesting! Here's more about her workshops and learning program: Artshift.net is dedicated to enriching educational curriculum with creative visual art projects, which transforms the classroom into a hands-on learning studio.

This integrated learning program partners local skilled artists with educators. Students access their creative resources, hone their communication skills in groups and apply their ideas with practical techniques, tools and learning strategies. Cultural participation encourages healthy self-image and builds community. This format for educational reform was developed by Leah Jacob.

Leah offers professional development workshops, community consultation and program coordination. She will travel to fulfill this vision. Learning that blends with creativity. You may contact her via this link!

This evening I found the most amazing site that I wanted to share, it's AICT, that's Images for College Teaching! Your ART student will be ever so grateful for this site!

Images for College Teaching is a personal, non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator Allan T. Kohl . AICT is intended primarily to disseminate images of art and architectural works in the public domain on a free-access, free-use basis to all levels of the educational community, as well as to the public at large. The images displayed on this site have been photographed on location by the author, who consents to their use in any application that is both educational and non-commercial in nature.

Each individual image page includes a Textbook Reference entry, showing where the represented work appears in each of the indexed textbooks. This information allows instructors and students to relate each AICT image to illustrations in the specific textbooks used by their institution.

In looking for new resources to share, sometimes you don’t need to look further than your own ‘front porch’ and you’d be amazed at what you find! I discovered two fantastic resources that I‘d like to share, the first is a post from ‘Home Where They Belong’ and the second is a fantastic blog, called ‘Homeschool Helper’! How do these two resources come together? Through music!

The ‘Home Where They Belong’ blog had a post this week, on January 18th, 2008, dedicated to music links to assist in memorizing facts and just for fun! It was even suggested that you might want to make a music CD to listen to in the car or just for your children’s entertainment!

The author of Homeschool Helper has really outdone herself! She’s supplied the songs and lyrics to remember all sorts of great facts like the bones of the body, the days of the week, plant parts and many more! Besides these fantastic resources, she also has posts about fantastic science experiments for the little kids in your life and the not so little! Make sure you pop over and visit!

Using music to memorize facts really isn’t new; do you remember the schoolhouse rocks songs? They still have the power to mesmerize the masses!

Si, ceci a obtenu me pensant qu'il doit y avoir des chansons qui sont plus spécifique à nous comme Canadiens ! Surtout nous, les Canadiens français ! J'ai trouvé tant de ressources incroyables pour aider vous enseigne votre enfant la langue française et pour apprendre par coeur de faits, juste regarder que j'ai trouvé:

• Chansons et comptines à écouter
• Comptines à écouter:
  • http://www.9moisavectoi.com/eveil/comptines1.htm
  • http://www.9moisavectoi.com/eveil/comptinesA1.htm
  • http://www.9moisavectoi.com/eveil/comptinesc1.htm
  • http://www.9moisavectoi.com/eveil/comptinesb1.htm
• Chansons enfantines à écouter
• Chansons (chorale) pour le cycle 1
• Phonemus : comptines et chansons

Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. Yuri Ono designs and manages the web site.
Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc), and see their work posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments is intended to guide people towards their own experience.
Learning To Love You More 

You can send your completed project to YURI or else you could start a blog depicting these assignments and share them with us here at Homeschoolblogger...This could prove to be a lot of fun! Either way, let us know, so we can check out your assignments online!

For crafter's, hobbyists, entrepreneurs and
PEOPLE WHO JUST LIKE TO MAKE STUFF
Do it yourself!
When your friends say, "You know you can buy one of those..." do you say, "Yeah, so?" If you love to make things, if you constantly have a project going in a back room, or cluttering up a kitchen counter, if you start making Christmas presents in June and you watch all those do-it-yourself shows on TV, come on in! We've got all kinds of recipes, formulas, craft projects and ideas that you can make yourself.

Make-Stuff

Certains élèves ont de la difficulté à bien fonctionner avec les méthodes traditionnelles d'enseignement tout simplement parce qu'ils ont un esprit plus artistique et ne peuvent se reconnaître dans les tâches qu'on leur assigne en mathématiques, en études sociales, en français ou en sciences. Pourtant, ils ont un excellent rendement scolaire en musique, en danse, en arts dramatiques et en arts plastiques.

Le prochaine site 'Apprendre par les Art' est une belle ressource pour répondre aux besoins de ces élèves. La philosophie APLA s'appuie sur un programme rigoureux et bien structuré qui influe sur le fonctionnement quotidien d'une classe. Ce programme comporte un important volet de perfectionnement professionnel destiné aux enseignants et aux artistes, ainsi que la rédaction de plans de leçons, l'élaboration de programmes scolaires, la mise en oeuvre en classe et l'évaluation continue.

APLA offre des plans de leçons dans tous les sujets du programme d'études. Le programme APLA établit des partenariats à long terme entre les enseignants et des artistes-éducateurs spécialement formés qui agissent comme agents de transformation dans l'école, en promouvant la collaboration, la prise de risques et l'apprentissage permanent tant des enseignants que des élèves.

La zone de discussion de APLA encourage un dialogue constructif sur les plans de leçons APLA entre les enseignants, les artistes et les autres participants au programme APLA.

'Apprendre par les Art'

(English)

If you are interested in producing video as part of your children's project-based learning, you will find lots of tools and information at Kids’ Vid. Students will enjoy displaying their work in this new and engaging way that is appropriate for a wide range of grade levels. Information is available on how to script a video, including a storyboard tool; how to produce a movie, including setting up a shot, lighting, and audio; how to edit using music and effects; and how to compress a movie into various formats. There is a teachers’ section with lessons on how to integrate video production into the curriculum as well as tips for improving video techniques, advice from other kids, and ways to use video in class. The theater showcases some of the work that classes have submitted to the site!

Kids’ Vid

Whatever holiday you are celebrating this season, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa or any other, we wish you the very best and hope you will join us in spreading the joy of the season!

It's official, we purchased a property just outside of Saint-Jerome and we begin digging in a couple of weeks! So in order to make building our new home a family affair, to keep the kids involved and to learn something along the way, I'll be posting links on this very subject! Today's link is just utterly fantastic and suitable for grades 5 and up!

'The great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed hundreds of houses throughout his long and distinguished career. Each home was uniquely fashioned to meet the needs of its owners and the particular qualities of its location. Wright inspired a generation of architects. Are you one of them? On this Web site, you can design a house, walk through it in 3D, and then share it with the world. You can also learn more about architecture, past and present, and explore Frank Lloyd Wright's life and work. The site allows students everywhere the opportunity to experience the "learning by doing" that makes our on-site Youth Architecture Workshops so popular. Addressing various learning styles and demands of curriculum, ArchitectStudio3D.org is a great teaching tool that is both challenging and satisfying.'

What a review, eh? Our kids will experience the creativity and challenge of being an architect, while at the same time gaining practice in skills related to national education standards in math, social studies, language arts, and fine art.

Enter the Architect Studio 3D here!

Note: Never forget... your homeschool is YOUR homeschool! You do what works best for YOUR family! Visit our legal/légal section, where you will find information about support groups, curriculum suppliers, school boards, assessments and much more!