My three-year-old son just completed (Acellus’s/Power Home Schools) “Foundations of Music” course, I was so proud of him. He really enjoyed “Rock and Roll” “African Music” and “jazz” (which I don’t like) he enjoys describing music as “high” and “low,” “fast” and “slow,” he plays the piano and sings the note names knowing A goes to G and starts over again. He listens to hear sopranos vs altos, bass, baritone and tenors.

In this course, we saw Irish music, Japanese music, Australian music, and a lot of other things we don’t listen to at home, like spiritual music by Handle.

My daughter took the course first when she was five. There is very little reading and a lot of enjoyment, but also a lot to learn. Lots of instruments, some music theory, a lot of the history of music.

My son failed the final at 68% the first time and had to retake it passing with 78% the second time after watching the targeted review videos, I think that speaks to the usefulness of the targeted review. He did say he was tired of taking the long final, but we pushed through anyway and when his father comes home my son tells him that he is “doing good music class”.

I really like Acellus, I don’t at all care about the negative remarks some people make, it’s more than a million people liking it and some people not liking it, and the negative voices often overshadow the positive masses.

Foundations of Music was such a cool class, it was the kind of class you take in college and enjoy learning things you never knew about the world. I really enjoyed the instruction, my son and daughter did as well. The teacher was exciting, but not fake, it was one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve seen.

My daughter’s favorite song before was Louder by Charice, now it’s the Queen of the Night’s Aria by Mozart. The class really had an impression on my daughter who took it in Kindergarden.

As a homeschool teacher the creative classes are the harder ones to teach. I used the Acellus course with Prodigy Music lesson by Rob Young with Youtube videos of music like Wintergatan and Vitalle Sax. It was great having the structure of the Acellus course to bridge off of, then we can use a keyboard, ocarina, ukulele, guitar, violin at home for hands on with the Prodigy lessons or Youtube.

If it were not for the Acellus class I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Frederic Chopin, my sister let me know there was a Nintendo game for that “Frederic: Resurrection of Music” (I and II). I just missed that learning about Beethoven and Mozart in Choir class, they don’t mention Chopin.

So I really got into minors and back into piano. Both my kids wanted to play the violin after learning about Joseph Haydn, so for less than $100 we got decent violins on Amazon and basic practice videos on Youtube and they got that chance to see how they like strings. They both went back to piano after, but it was nice for them just to see that there are so many instruments, that they can try them out, they are there for now or for later.

Usually, I really like “free stuff” but I did find the $25/month for Acellus via Power Homeschool totally worth it.

I really enjoyed “Foundations of Music” much like “Robot Dance Programing” I find it a good class to warm up on. The AP Chemistry is a very hard class, sometimes looking at other classes you might think Acellus isn’t hard enough, but I don’t agree, each class is hard or easy based on the content, the national core standards that are reflected by most schools in curriculum pacing and content, and the learner.

For my three year old the course was hard, but he didn’t mind correcting his mistakes, like Timpanis being made of calfskin or the tiger being the national symbol of India. For my daughter, the musical periods were pretty much the only difficult part, from Baroque to Classical to Romantic to 20th Century and a few of the instruments such as oboe vs clarinet were hard. For me the musical periods are hard as well, I don’t really understand George Gershwin and especially jazz. Also rock vs pop or classical vs baroque, I can’t listen to a baroque song and just “know” it isn’t classical.

I really enjoyed going back to some composers I haven’t listened too in a long time that I like a lot, like Bach and Beethoven. I just loved the way the course was covered and it made it so much easier to cover music by deep diving into interests instead of spending time looking for images of notes ext. It allowed me to coast when I needed to and do crazy things when I had energy instead of spending most of my energy gathering the basics.

I just loved the course and I want to thank the instructor Dr. Adrianna Marshall from all of us.

Some of things I was able to do with time not spent organizing music class, work with sound files on Movavi to add sound tracks to 12 science fair videos, load Sim Tunes music emulator onto our windows computer making music composition easy and fun for my daughter, work with the Prodigy Music lessons with the opposite child as the one learning the Music Foundations.

I really loved the positive attitude, the integration of music appreciation of the everyday world and the exploration of world music on top of the music theory/music history.

Thank you so much to Dr. Marshall this course was a fun one, but it gave me a deeper appreciation of music and led me to feel more confident homeschooling, because I wanted access to something that would cover the creative realm not just math and reading.

🎶