Whether you’re teaching your kids music for their enjoyment or in hopes of them playing professionally, a great music curriculum focuses on making music fun for kids. For about the past three years, I’ve been teaching my children music informally (as you can see in this video on my Facebook page). Since I try to keep extra curricular activities as budget friendly as possible, a lot of my kids’ learning has been through fun music activities at home.

Making Music Fun with Hal Leonard’s “For Kids” Series

I was happy to try out the Hal Leonard “For Kids” series, which combines classic instructional strategies with contemporary music. This is one of the oldest and most well known music learning books there are. For over 60 years, students have purchased Hal Leonard books to learn music.

This summer, I watched my kids participate in singing camps and musical theatre camps. From first solos to stage fright, there was so much learning left to do after the camps ended. Regular practice can really improve your voice, but I didn’t want to shell out a lot of money to pay for voice lessons just yet. Since the hardest part seemed to be memorizing the words, I thought an anthology of songs would be a great starting place.

To focus on teaching my kids some new songs, I used the Children’s Edition of The Singers Musical Theatre Anthology. I liked that the book came with accompaniment for some incredibly well known, contemporary songs, including an all-time favorite kid song, “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” from Frozen. Logging into the online music library with the access code was simple. Playing the accompaniment was excellent practice in matching your vocal pitch to the notes.

It was awesome that with the accompaniment, you don’t have to be able to read musical notes very well yet. Listening to the streaming music while looking at the song sheet helped immensely. You can even download the music so you don’t need internet access to listen to the songs.

The song selections in the singing anthology included many fun songs for kids. There were four songs from Annie, which Samantha was excited to learn. When she saw a performance of the play last year, she loved it, and she is hoping to be in the play someday in the future. Having access to the songs will help her prepare.

In addition to The Singers Musical Theatre Anthology, I received Piano for Kids, Drums for Kids, and Guitar for Kids. Each book came with an access code so you could listen to the accompaniment while practicing on your instrument. I had an easy time logging in to check out the accompaniment for each book. The website worked better with my laptop than with my iPad.

Hal Leonard music print publisher company has been around for a long time. With so many online methods of learning music, there is a lot of competition in the industry of making music fun for kids. Since this curriculum has a strong online component, I thought it had a successful appeal to modern children.

If you want to teach your kids music and aren’t sure of where to start, this “For Kids” series is an excellent starting place. The books come with simple activities directed at making music simple to learn. I liked that the steps and directions built on each other and got more complicated later in the book. When the book began, it went over the basics to help kids gain a strong foundation.

Nowadays, many people go to online learning websites to learn music, but there are pros to using a curriculum that comes with a print component. For kids who are hands on and visual learners, using a workbook to write on makes learning easier. The online portion of the “For Kids” series helps make this a very strong music curriculum for kids. With fun, contemporary music selections and learning activities that build on each other, these books can help any kid pick up a basic understanding of music.

Disclosure

I received a free item, but it in no way influenced my opinion.

Desteny July 15, 2016

I love this! I’m not very musically inclined at all, but my husband is. We are both hoping our daughter will have the same love for music that he does.

Heather Noire July 15, 2016

Love how inspirational this is. And the concept of music is so inviting 🙂 http://www.bauchlefashion.com

theresa July 15, 2016

Aw, thank you!

Rachel Osborn July 16, 2016

This is a great idea! Not everything is best done online. That’s not the way I learned, lol! Now I sound old…but I am more of a visual, hands on learner. I think computers are too easy to zone out in front of.

Jessica July 17, 2016

I love this! Teaching music to our youth is so important!

Debbie July 18, 2016

That’s pretty neat! We’ve been wanting to teach our son guitar but weren’t quite sure where to start. I had never heard of this program before. Pretty neat!