Last week, I held my Music History Blast From The Past camp. We had a blast! 😉
As in previous years, I used my own composer lapbook curriculum for this camp (available here). I know some of you will be very pleased to hear that I have created lapbooks for FOUR brand new composers this year, which will be added to the shop later this summer. Stay tuned!
Snack break is always a hit during camp. 😉
Fun with Scrabble tiles during break.
The four composers we studied this year are Domenico Scarlatti, Muzio Clementi, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. I am always amazed at the amount of information my students retain from this lapbook format. The pictures and the interaction with the information makes the history come alive.
One of my adult students asked if she could help with camp this year, and I gladly accepted. She was a huge asset, especially being a retired school teacher.
On the day we studied Rachmaninoff, I played a 78 record of Rachmaninoff playing his own Prelude in C# minor using my Victrola. This was a good learning experience in so many ways! (“What’s a record?” “What’s a 78?” “What, no electricity?? How does it work?” “This is Rachmaninoff himself?”)
We also spent a little bit of time at the end of each day on a simple composition project.
Story Cubes were a fun tool for getting initial inspiration for our compositions.
Busy at work at the piano!
Notice my cat hanging out with us in this photo? 🙂
And my students insisted that Coda also be a part of this group photo!
It was a fun-filled week!
Here’s more information about how I structure my music history camp each year. And here’s the link to where you can learn more about my composer lapbook curriculum. These lapbooks are great not only for camps, but also for group classes during the year.
Thanks for reading!
I’m in the middle of doing your Music History camp! I picked Vivaldi, Beethoven, Brahms, and Joplin. They are loving it and the parents have been really impressed! I love making the lapbooks! I had no idea how much glue sticks we’d go through.
Yes, lots of gluesticks! 🙂 I’m so glad to hear about your camp fun, Marcy!
Hi Joy! I love the camp idea. What age range would you say works best? I see a variety of ages in your photos. How many hours per day works best?
The nice thing about covering music history is that it can be done with a group consisting of a variety of ages. I’ve had students as young as 5 and 6, but do expect that they will be slow at cutting and assembling the lapbook. It’s helpful to have a high school helper for camp. I’ve had students as old as 13, 14, or 15 at the same camp, but I’ve heard from other teachers that even early high schoolers have enjoyed the lapbook curriculum! I’m always amazed at how much information students retain from it.
As far as hours go…
It’s a flexible curriculum. If you want to keep the composer study pretty barebones, you can complete it in an hour — or maybe 45 minutes if you have a helper or two to help the younger students. If you want to have the luxury of more time to listen to recordings on YouTube and really talk through and review the information that was presented, I would recommend up to two hours with a snack break in the middle.
Check out this blog post for more info: https://colorinmypiano.flywheelsites.com/2017/07/19/2017-music-history-camp/